A 20-year-old college student from Oklahoma died after slamming into a tree while skiing at Keystone on Sunday, authorities said today.
Witnesses said that Benjamin Hawk, a nursing student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, lost control while skiing on the intermediate Spring Dipper run about 1:15 p.m. on Sunday.
He was airlifted to St. Anthony’s Hospital Central, where he was pronounced dead of a severe head injury at 7:15 p.m., said Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson. His parents, Phil and Debbie Hawk, flew to Denver from Portland, Ore., on Sunday night and could not be contacted.
Hawk, a junior who was on a ski trip with some friends from college on their holiday break, was not wearing a helmet.
News of his death stunned officials at the small, Christian liberal-arts school of about 1,000 students in Bartlesville, Okla.
“In many ways, Benji was an all-around leader,” said Everett Piper, president of the university. “And the student body is very close-knit. There will be hundreds of students who will mourn him as a colleague, as a Christian leader, as a young man and as someone with a bright future and who has already done great things.”
Hawk, whose father is a Wesleyan pastor, served the school on a summer ministry team that led music camps for high-school students, and he had been chosen by his peers to lead a chapel service. The school initiated a telephone chain to notify students and faculty members on Sunday, and it will dedicate its first chapel session of the new year to Hawk, Piper said.
“As I was putting my son in bed, he asked was Benji going to make it?” Piper said. “I told him: ‘It doesn’t sound like it. Did you know Benji very well?’ He said: ‘Oh, yeah. I’d hang out with him out on campus in the game room.’ For a 19- or 20-year-old young man to be humble enough to reach out to a 12-year-old boy is pretty phenomenal. My son said his prayers for Benji as he went to bed.”
Piper considered Hawk an excellent skier who had been with classmates on previous ski trips to Colorado.
Hawk is the first ski-related fatality of the season. Last year, seven people died of injuries at Colorado ski areas, although statistically the sport is safer than many other outdoor activities, including bicycle riding and swimming.
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or at slipsher@denverpost.com.
