Matthew Klopfleisch
#1160
1977 - 1997 |
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The tragic death of Matt Klopfleisch '99 #1160, a Nu Alpha Phi active, will deeply sadden all Nu Alpha Phi alums. We, the editors of the Oak Leaf, offer condolences to his family, his friends, and to the active members of Nu Alpha Phi on behalf of the entire NAP alumni association.
Through correspondence with Lee Harlan '55 #147 I learned that Matt's mother, Stephanie Klopfleisch '60, is the current Vice-President of the Pomona College Alumni Association and that his two sisters also graduated from Pomona. The family asks that memorial contributions be sent to: LA Jazz Society or Bill Green Mentoring Program, the addresses for is Department 176, P.O. Box 4122 Woodland Hills, CA 91365-4172.
Your editors have made a donation to the Nu Alpha Phi Scholarship Fund in Matt's name on behalf of the actives.
All of the following are reprinted from the February 7, 1997 issue of the Student Life.
Jeremy Douglass, News Editor
The Pomona College community was shocked and saddened when sophomore Matt Klopfleisch took his own life early last week while off campus. A memorial service for Matt was held at Bridges Hall of Music last Thursday, and was attended by family, friends, students and faculty. His funeral was held privately at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles the preceding Tuesday.
The memorial at Little Bridges included songs, prayers, reflections on Matt's life by several speakers, and the recital of a poem written by Matt.
Matthew Randall Klopfleisch, the son of Randy and Stephanie Klopfleisch, was born in Los Angeles on June 3, 1977. He had an active and happy childhood, despite frequent hospitalizations due to congenital blood disease, specrocytosis. His early interests in music and art broadened when he came to Pomona after graduating with distinction from Campbell Hall. In his three semesters here he visited a wide variety of departments, succeeding academically as well as making a great many friends.
Although his family felt that poring over the details of his death could only increase the trauma of those who loved him at his passing, there were some things that they needed to share with the people who knew him. They expressed concern that others in the Pomona community might contemplate similar actions, and that the details of Matt's death might obscure the memory of his life.
"Matt had sought counseling, so it was not completely out of the blue...there were things he had been working on" said his sister Liz Gothard.
"At the same time, one second he was here, the next second he was gone. It's baffling...as humans we never know what each other are thinking, and Matt was so close to so many people. There was no note," she said. "somehow you think there is going to be one, but I've read that usually there isn't."
As far as those close to Matt knew, there was no major or dramatic event that triggered his suicide. Rather it was a buildup over a very long time. "This was not planned...he made a decision based on his inner turmoil, not on his relationship with other people," Liz said.
At Matt's memorial, Professor Brian Stonehill read from a poem of Matt's that the family felt expressed very well his state of mind at the time:
...My curiosity swirls them round, trying
to distill a reckonable element of conversation,
but all that I process is a murky brown gel called
confusion.
Matt Klopfleisch will be deeply missed.
Martha Andresen, Professor
We search for words to give shape to our grief, to find meaning and acceptance, to create a place for Matt in our memory and understanding. We search for words because the loss of Matt threatens to return us to silence--our private silences, those fragile, unquiet places within where words seem absent, empty, or powerless, and our public silences, those gaps in our conversations or reflections we have all experienced in recent days, gaps that our faltering words and pained awarenesses seem so inadequate to fill.
We may turn, in our need, to remembered voices in our community, those treasured spirits animating the collective treasure we call our liberal arts tradition, words of our poets long departed but still echoing, still speaking with a clarion call and splendor to our perplexity and grief, and our yearning for affirmation of life newly wounded by mortality.
We remember John Donne's tolling bell, his words echoing our sense of the preciousness of a single human life, and the diminution of us all in the passing of one so cherished and promising among us:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
We remember Hamlet's anguished questioning, whether to be or not to be whether it is nobler in the mind to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against them, thus ending the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to. We remember too Hamlet's mysterious acceptance of powers beyond us in life and death when at the end of his brief life he affirms a Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will, a Providence present in the fall of a sparrow. We remember his words as he goes to what he knows will be his final, fatal duel:
If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is it to leave betimes? Let be.
And we remember the quiet comfort of release in Horatio's parting lullaby as he cradles Hamlet who now enters the night without fear:
Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels
Sing thee to thy rest.
And we hear in the closing verse of Milton's elegy Lycidas, a poem of mourning for a college friend who perished by drowning, the contours of our own faith however shared with the poet or different, and our work, and our calling, so deepened and illuminated by the life ad loss of a precious friend, and by our own capacity to encompass all and live on with hope and purpose:
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth,
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves...
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills
While the still morn went out with sandals grey;
He touched the tender stops of various quills;
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
The voices of our poets may fill our grieved silences, ease our mourning by giving mortality words, and articulate our affirmation of all in the human spirit that endures and prevails. Matt, too, loved words. Matt, these words join with our own in love and deathless memory.
Brian Stonehill, Professor
When I read the notice in my mailbox Friday morning in the English Dept. office, I had to sit down immediately. My legs...gave out. I share the grief that all of us here are experiencing, and what it has taught me is that we are a family.
I didn't know that. And the hole where Matt used to be is in the fabric of our lives. I didn't see that fabric til it was so badly rent, so sadly torn.
I wonder if Matt was in the audience when I spoke to an auditorium full of students at Campbell Hall two years ago. I was talking to different age groups in those days about violence--violence in the media, I mean. And the point that I always bring that lecture to is that we should treasure the things in culture that treasure life, and we should trash the shows and the games that treat life like trash. I imagine that Matt was there, and his sudden absence makes no sense to me as an affront to life, but only as an end to some terrible suffering he kept from all of us.
Before this morning, many of us may have felt shut out from Matt's interior life, and we wish we could have spoken with him, we wish we could have reached out to him. But it's not too late for Matt to begin to have a new effect, a good and enduring effect on our lives. Not, not for a second to imagine that what he did would be right for us, and if we'd only known what Liz has shared with us sooner we'd worry less about the community we now witness so closely drawn together. Matt knew enough about sending messages to know that as we came to know him better we'd understand that his was not an example to follow but something we might learn from--that this community is a family. The message wasn't do what I'm doing, but rather look after each other, because life IS precious...
Matt's family was already known to me in the person of his sister Jennifer, who, when I called to offer my condolences, said that Matt had said that he had wanted to be a Media Studies major, except that his sister had already been one, and so he'd probably go into English. Just like her brother, Jen, even in her pain, was thinking of something to say to ME that would be nourishing and sustaining to me. Matt was the same way, I could tell it from the way he participated in our class.
What I've discovered in the pulling together created by Matt's slipping away is how connected we all are in this community...
Others of us have been drawn together--just as all of us having been drawn together, by our attachment to Matt. Scott Swanson has come by to tell me how interested, how genuinely interested Matt always was whenever Scott came back from a date, or from a swim meet, and Matt wanted to hear all the details. "Some people will ask questions just so you'll ask about them," Scott told me, "but Matt's enthusiasm and his interest were real and genuine." Mattie Perez '98 #1145 and I could share our bereavement, as now we all must, and Damon Anderson, my advisee, shared with me a then-casual recording of a now precious audio tape, so that we might share it together...
Everyone who has spoken to me about Matt has mentioned his smile: how easy and quick it was, and how it seemed to brighten things up and lighten everybody's mood. Little did we know, then, how deliberate and effortful and generous that smile was. Thank you, Matt--thank you always.
Lauren Gard
Thinking of Matt
I see dark shiny hair pulled back into a ponytail
freckles splashed across a long straight nose
cheerful eyes, thoughtful and warm
and a grin that lit up his whole face
not a big wide open smile like the ones I give
but a slightly silly
glimpse of white teeth.
I think of life
when I think of Matt
he was always present
even when he slinked in half asleep to ID class
drumsticks clicking against books in his bag.
Down-to-earth
solid and quick to laugh.
I didn't see
a past in his eyes that he wished to forget
or a future he hoped to avoid.
I saw a friend
who offered me one of the dozen Cinnabons
he smuggled from a study break
as I typed a term paper on his computer
because Gibson was packed.
A gifted writer who delivered a memorable
performance for his final project in our
freshman seminar
the topic was personal boundaries transgressed
and Matt stepped to the front of the room
ski poles in hand
goggles and knit hat in place.
He nearly smashed a nearby TV screen
with flailing poles
when he jumped up on the table
and conquered the biggest slope of his life.
Another classmate spoke of swallowing a bottle of pills years back
and a theme of past emotional struggles
ran clear through nearly all of our stories
but Matt
he just jumped up
and took us by surprise
made us laugh and appreciate.
We shared a Chinese lunch one October afternoon
met by chance in the little place
near the 98 cent store.
It was the only time we really talked at length
and I left reluctantly
thinking I needed to know Matt better
intrigued by his friendliness, his humor
his intelligence, his laid back demeanor
and, of course, that sloping grin he slipped me
whenever we passed.
The sunshine is warm as I write this
it appears to glow the grass yellow-green
from the stone table in the shade where I sit
and contemplate a friend Ill never be closer to.
My skin is cool.
I chill at the thought of Matt gone
but when I look over my shoulder
and see where the white of the mountains
stretches clear up to the cerulean sky
I cannot help but revel in the beauty
that is still here
that offers itself to me.
And I know that Matt is somewhere beautiful now
and it is more divine than ever because he is.
Rebecca Sanford
Matt,
Suffering incomprehension,
Veiled in numb disbelief,
I walked to your vigil.
Remembering in waves and
cloaked in silent thoughts
the gathered faces faded
into the night with you.
Drips of hot wax from
my dancing flame flooded
my body with memories:
The warmth of your skin
as our necks crossed in a final
embrace of casual farewell,
reposes by my window...smiles.
The music in my head and visions
of cigarettes and conversations
blend into the smoke of that pyre
which delivered your spirit before us,
our voices spreading hymns of comfort,
eternal peace, and future hope.
Death transforms all our souls.
Love is the only answer I find
for the question of life. Undying.
I still feel yours living and growing
in the tallness of the trees, the hard beats
of drums, and in the laughter of babes.
Carina Cha
the stars fell
and are engraved
in the ground
we get stopped,
i want to leave..
in the hills
we laughed
she cried
after you died,
under the living room porch.
chlorine smell, mixed with plastic
i hate that smell..
and i'm sick again
we know you left
but we don't know why..
i think of chasing clouds
and your figure emerging
somewhere in between,
waiting for the heavens to descend
and when the night falls
we freeze
once i watched you play
and paint
from inside..
with all my power
i tried to distract you
splayed on the bed
you just faced me,
shiny ponytail
dandruff and all
in my face
today i walked
where you do still
in heaven-sent footsteps
Mattie Perez '98 #1145
Thoughts on Matt Klopfleisch at 3 am
(That is: Thoughts at 3 in the Morning in Regards to Matt, not Thoughts About What Matt was Like on a Random (or Specific) Night at 3 in the Morning.)
A musical creation, what some call a song,
Attempts to harness chaos, rein in some of the
Superfluous energy about and ride it. When
The beast is feeling generous (if feeling it
Does), destinations approach often, pass by,
And leave a beautiful reverberation in
The mind's ear. Because the blind rider knows
Not where these oases come from, nor when one will
Emerge out of the dark cacophony, he must put faith
In both himself and the beast. A most important step
Is understanding that journeying within a group
Of travelers is better for the in-between
Spaces are terrifying and sharing the echoes
And arrivals with brothers and sisters- now that is something.
Max Zarou '98 #1159
Last Wednesday, Matt Klopfleisch died. He was my friend. We went to the same parties, we were in the same fraternity, we shared cigarettes and beer and whatever intoxicants we had. He was kind. And smart. And talented. And positive. He never had anything unkind to say about anything or anybody.
The one memory that I can't shake is when Matt and I initiated into Nu Alpha Phi at the same time. Blindfolded and scared, we were stumbling around Walker Beach. I felt a hand on my shoulder and tensed up immediately.
"Who's this?" a voice said.
"Max. Who's this?"
"Matt."
I relaxed, and we sat down. We may have talked more, it's not important. Hearing him say his name was enough. I knew that he was there, and he knew that I was there, and that was enough.
People will say he kept to himself, didn't talk much. He didn't need to. He exuded such a natural and contagious calm and ease that conversation seemed almost unnecessary.
One Sunday, about six or eight of us went up to the cabin to clean it up and do some repairs. Matt and I were assigned to a part of the trail that was falling apart. We gathered rocks, hammered spikes, picked, shoveled and flattened. When one was tired the other would take over. When we were both tired, we would smoke and look at the scenery. We must have spent three or four hours, until it was perfect and the sun had long since hid behind the mountains.
Matt never pulled me out of a burning building, or jumped on a grenade to save me, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a hero. He was there, and that was enough.
Adam Davis '98 #1146
a little late
this time tempo
one beat of
a rest too long
sing cymbal
downbeat:
life is percussive
and death reverberant
you could have played
a few more bars
sing symbol
Matt Klopfleisch '99 #1160
What is poetry?
Poetry is inspired,
not a goal.
strange things come out of
people, and when we really
look at it, a poet is one
who can dig past the mechanics
of memory, actions, and words.
He synthesizes on paper a representation
of his mind, a work that journies
past the simple, the obvious standardized life:
Flashing beams of intellect meld
into my brain, how do I process this data?
My red passion, yellow inspiration, and purple
power are bothered. What are they saying?
My curiosity swirls them round, trying to distill
a reckonable element of conversation,
but all that I process is a murky brown gel called
confusion.
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