Massanutten, Va is not what you would call a destination ski resort, but it’s where I learned to ski. During the spring of my freshman year at EMU I took skiing to fulfill my PE elective and I would ride over with Todd Stoltzfus, who lived in the dorm room next to me, and ski till the lifts closed. Since then I’ve skied a lot bigger places, so I wasn’t terribly excited last winter when some friends decided that would be a good place to ski for a weekend, but the housing was free and the lift tickets cheap and I had a new snowboard to ride. Matthew Franklin Cress was along for the ride and he hadn’t ever really skied before. I think he may have gone once in high school but he was definitely nervous. Anyway his girlfriend Emilie talked him into renting snow blades and they followed me up the lift for Rebel Yell. Getting off at mid station, he was none to steady as we set off down Lower Dixie Dare. I was going at a pretty good clip and I started to look around to see how far back he and Emilie were. I was shocked to see Matt down by my feet in the process of falling. There he was, not quite on the ground, looking up into my face with a startled expression on his face that said, “What is this?”

Matt committed suicide a year ago. He suffered several medical conditions and after years of fighting decided enough was enough. The thing that always stood out to people about Matt Cress was how big he lived. He was charging, living life to the fullest. However the thing that I really appreciated was a tenderness and vulnerability he had with others. A willingness to share his failings with people and forget them in new situations. As I think back to that evening on the slopes it was archetypal Matt, charging into a situation, ignoring the face of failure, startled when he it met it.

Oh and there there was an incident on a Friday night involving a big toe, but that’s another story.