Learning from Eli

by Melodie Davis

A year ago on Nov. 22, 2010, Eli Lehman, a Turner Ashby graduate and senior at Virginia Tech, with a growing compassion for the needs of others, slipped 300 feet to his death at Crab Tree Falls, Nelson County, Va.

How does a family survive and go on?

Eli loved the outdoors, sports and, more recently, orphans in Kenya where he worked for six weeks the summer of 2009 after earlier going on a mission trip there with his family.

His parents, Gerry and Pam Lehman and brother Seth were not the only ones asking, “Why, God?” in the wake of Eli’s venture onto an algae-covered ledge at the top of the falls.

The past year has been the hardest of their lives, yet they are able to lavish praise on the support they felt from family, friends, work colleagues and community.

Gerry is director of food services for Rockingham County Schools and Pam is an algebra teacher and an assistant girls’ basketball coach at Turner Ashby High School; Seth, a graduate of Virginia Tech, works in Richmond.

As a child Eli grew up “fiercely competitive”—always active, full of life, enjoying soccer from the age of six, and later basketball, camping, kayaking, and mountain biking. Gerry coached ten or so teams his sons played on over the years, and knew how frustrated Eli would get when he’d lose. Pam admitted she and Eli often butted heads through his childhood and teen years. “I said things to him that I wish I never would have said,” she recalled.

But he was also a good student: began reading before he went to kindergarten, enjoyed word plays, math and drawing, not surprising, given his eventual major in industrial design at Tech. He was a visual person with an eye for patterns in clouds, or even on a stop sign. When he died he was seeking a better view to photograph the highest falls west of the Mississippi.

“He wasn’t comfortable with who he was until midway through high school when he became more of a leader and not just a follower,” recalled his father. Eli participated in FFA leadership and later at Tech, in Campus Crusade for Christ—a student run faith club. Through two experiences in Kenya, Eli began questioning Western materialism and wealth, thinking deeply about what it meant to live more simply. A member of Grace Covenant Church in Harrisonburg, “He was developing a real heart for mission and was exploring how to apply his major to make a difference in the lives of those who are less fortunate,” said his father. “He had matured in leaps and bounds the last couple of years,” Gerry marveled. “Sometimes I wonder what was in Eli’s mind as he fell but I can only trust that to God,” Pam shared. Gerry and Pam spent time talking with the four friends who were with Eli on the climb to hear exactly how the accident occurred and to assure the friends not to feel guilt over what had occurred— the students had not been fooling round. Twenty-five others have plunged to their deaths at the falls, with signs citing the danger.

When the friends got down the trail to Eli, they pulled his body from the rocky stream. Eli was not conscious but still breathing. The friends gave their clothing to keep Eli warm while two went to get help since cell phones were out of range. It took squad workers and friends three hours to carry him out on a stretcher. When he stopped breathing, they used CPR for about a half-hour until it was obvious Eli, with massive head and other injuries, wasn’t going to make it. His best friend since the age of two, Andrew Hedrick, hugged and held Eli in his final moments.

Andrew’s parents, Ellen and Lou, were also close friends of the Lehmans. Lou called Gerry, who was at home. Pam was at basketball practice at T.A. Lou told Gerry there’d been a very serious accident involving the boys and they decided to meet up with Pam in the parking lot at T.A. for details. “By the time we gathered, everyone was crying, and we knew it was the worst kind of news,” recalled Gerry. “Andrew, who we called our ‘third son,’ had a hard time getting the story out.” Later Pam and Gerry Skyped their son Seth in Richmond and three of his friends immediately brought him home.

Eli also had a serious girlfriend, Jessica, “who was the hardest to tell,” said Pam. “We know now they had discussed their future together.” The parents also called his three roommates at Tech.

A memorial service was held the following Sunday at Grace Covenant where Gerry, Pam and Seth all spoke. Pam recalled the moments of frustration and anger in raising Eli, and thanked God that “in the last few years he and I have been able to relate to one another in a way that I had always dreamed of relating to my children.” She said Eli was wrestling with how to “be a provider for his future family and also be a man ‘sold out’ to Jesus.” Eli had been planning to be interviewed that week for a position with “Teach for America” hoping to eventually teach English in either China or Kenya and “somehow use his industrial design skills to help people in third world countries.”

The Lehman family had to get through Thanksgiving before having Eli’s memorial service on Sunday; Christmas followed quickly. Their continuing pain made the holidays difficult but they received much tangible support. Pam stated, “We didn’t have to cook the entire month of December.” Pam’s brother also had a very serious operation during the same time. “We had to remember others were grieving too.” A relative who felt badly about not calling Pam just to talk or check in admitted she didn’t call because she felt guilty “because I still have my children.”

Gerry noted, “We had all that support and it was still excruciating. I don’t know how people that don’t have a faith community can get through it.”

Marriages are often severely tested after the tragic death of a child and when asked that question, Gerry collected his thoughts. “While we both feel secure in our commitment to our relationship, it was a challenging year. You are grieving, disappointed, angry, and one of us will say or do something that makes the other go ‘where did that come from?’”

After coming through probably the “worst fight in our marriage, we found God’s grace to help work through it,” Pam shared with her church family.

Gerry and Pam both express that they have leaned greatly on God and are immensely grateful that they both had close times of bonding with Eli the weekend before he died. Gerry enjoyed a game of four-on-four “pick up” basketball where he was guarding 6-ft. 6-in. Eli. At the memorial service, Gerry said “this is one of my last memories of Eli, him shooting three pointers and driving through the lane to the hoop like I wasn’t even there.”

He told that story to encourage parents and kids that the “only time it’s too late to foster relationships with family or friends is after they are gone. If relationships are severed, or they are not that great right now, take whatever small steps are necessary to begin the healing.” Eli had given Pam a hug in the kitchen and both said “I love you” on Sunday night before his Monday hike. Pam recalls being happy that peace and love had replaced their years of butting heads.

They also took comfort in messages Eli had posted on his Facebook page, which is still up as a kind of memory book. Eli wrote, “Eternity doesn’t start when the earthly clock stops … eternity starts in the NOW. What are you doing with your life that’s going to echo through eternity? What are you investing in NOW that has eternal significance for tomorrow?” And under his profile picture Eli posted, “Many people wonder if there is an afterlife. Everyone finds out!”

Pam, Gerry and Seth are assured Eli is enjoying that afterlife with God. “Death isn’t so scary now,” said Pam. The Lehmans, in allowing their story to be shared further, do not wish to draw attention to themselves but rather that the lessons learned by Eli—to mend relationships, to care for others, to anchor himself firmly with God, to not go out on a posted ledge—would be a message to others.

Virginia Tech gave the Lehmans an honorary diploma on Eli’s behalf in May, 2011, and established an award program in Eli’s name for student-led humanitarian efforts.

MELODIE DAVIS, national editor of Living, lives near Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Helpful books on grief and afterlife recommended by the Lehmans:

Where is God When It Hurts, by Phillip Yancey (Zondervan, 2001).
A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss, by Jerry L. Sittser, (Zondervan, 1998)
A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis, (HarperOne, 2001)
Heaven is For Real, by Todd Burpo, (Thomas Nelson, 2011)

©2009, Valley Living