Do Ut Des: Remembering A Giver

Part of being truly local is sharing a lot of the same values, experiences, and people as our readers. As Patch renews a push for members of the community to contribute slices of their lives, I felt compelled to be the first.

I met Alex Paduch when he was a student at the New England High School Journalism Collaborative in 2013. He was in the vacuum which exists after graduating high school but before you enter college. The last summer of being a kid.

Alex was terrific - you didn't need a writer to tell you that. His passion to tell a good a story was insatiable. The joy he got from doing so was infectious.

He clung to the NEHSJC summer program for the next few years as an assistant, annually sacrificing a week of summer. He was full of questions for anyone in the business, and he was full of answers for the students who wanted to crack in.

No one dressed sharper than Alex, no one's hairline as carefully sculpted. He was perhaps most proud of being a broadcast intern at WCVB Channel 5. It took him all of about four minutes to belong - that's what happens when you're talented, hungry, and kind. He counted anchor Maria Stephanos among his fans and friends.

The core value of the NEHSJC program has always been do ut des - Latin for "I give that you may give." Alex gave so that others could. He was doing his part.

I've long thought a strong measure of a friend is being able to see that person once or twice a year and reconnect in an instant. When I'd see Alex, once or twice a year, it was a hug and a lot of laughs. Just another gift he was giving me.

As you get older, you begin to understand a lot of what parents and teachers told you. How the real sadness in losing someone young is seeing that which could have been snuffed out, the world being robbed of one of a very finite number of opportunities to be changed.

His biography in the 2013 edition of the NEHSJC newspaper read: "Five days out of the week you will find Alex Paduch playing the drums. The Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr is Alex’s biggest influence. Alex, a Middleboro High graduate, loves to play soccer and to write. He has been accepted into Lyndon State College for broadcast journalism starting in the fall."

Alex was a broadcast journalist. But the kid could write. And he wrote his story in ink.

Alex Paduch, a Middleborough, Mass., native, died early Monday morning in a single-vehicle crash near his Lyndon State College campus in Vermont. He was 21.

Click here to donate to a GoFundMe for Alex Paduch's funeral expenses and donate to the NEHSJC in his memory.