Jack Gilles knew Lynn “Gordie” Bailey for less than two months. Now, the 19-year-old has dedicated his life to remembering how his friend died.
“My biggest fear is that I’ll wake up one morning and realize I haven’t thought about Gordie for three months,” said Gilles, a University of Colorado student and former pledge at the Chi Psi fraternity, where Bailey died after a night of heavy drinking in September 2004. “I can’t forget him.”
At an auditorium Tuesday at Cherry Creek High School, Gilles and four other members of the now-closed fraternity chapter discussed their lessons on responsible drinking. The presentation to roughly 700 students was a mix of lecture – “You never want to wake up in that nightmare” – and remorse – “I essentially left him dead that morning.”
The CU students aren’t paid for their work and have not been mandated to do it after a dozen fraternity brothers were cited following Bailey’s death after a fraternity initiation.
A few months after Bailey died, several fraternity brothers created G.O.R.D. – Guidelines and Objectives of Responsible Drinking. So far, the group has given a handful of talks to CU sororities and residence-hall students and has plans for more discussions across the country.
That keeps Bailey’s death fresh in their minds.
“I remember the firefighter waking me up,” said Will Percy, 20, who pleaded guilty to providing alcohol to a minor in the case. “After that, your life changes.”
Bailey, a CU freshman, drank the equivalent of at least 17 shots of whiskey in less than 30 minutes during the initiation in the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. He died the next morning.
The fraternity brothers told their audience that they might have been able to save him had they known to look for shallow breathing, pale skin or other signs of significant alcohol poisoning. They did not address the hours between Bailey’s drinking and his death, when house members wrote expletives and racial slurs on his body.
“What was done between (the drinking and death) is sort of irrelevant,” said Matt Goode, 22, who helps lead the discussions. Goode also pleaded guilty to providing alcohol to a minor.
“You hope that the message gets across that you have to look out for one another and know limits,” said Claire Podgorski, 17, a Cherry Creek junior who helped organize the event as part of broader discussions on teen choices. “You have to be safe.”
For Gilles, each day is a small victory. The talks, he said, have helped him though his grief.
“Sometimes I feel sorry for Gordie; other times I miss him,” Gilles said. “In a way, though, Gordie has brought us all together.”
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
