By Seth DuChene
Editor
Only a few days before his death, Garrett Mills asked his father, Dave, what a ‘legacy’ was.
“I’m not sure why he wanted to know, but I explained it to him, and he thought about that for a moment, and he said, ‘When I go, I want to leave a legacy,’ Dave said. “Then we lost him a few days later.”
Garrett, 15, died as the result of an accident at a soccer field on King Street in Napanee on May 12.
Garrett’s question ultimately turned into a mission for Dave and his wife, Gwen. “Literally, a day or two after the accident, I thought, ‘My gosh, how is that legacy going to happen.’ The first thought that came to mind was doing some sort of a music festival to memorialize him, but to do more than that, to have some sort of a cause behind it,’ said Dave.
That idea culminated into GarrettFest, which was held on Sunday at the Strathcona Paper Centre. Three bands — The Saturday Night Glad Rags, KnucKel Hed and Trilogy — took the stage to support the event, which also served as a fundraiser to establish a new scholarship at NDSS in Garrett’s name. (Donations collected at Music By The River at Conservation Park on Sunday were also put toward the scholarship fund.)
The idea of a music festival, however, wasn’t just Dave’s. “Keith Gordon, a friend of mind and a local musician, the first thing he said to me when he came up to me in the visitation line in the wake was, ‘I want to organize a music festival in Garrett’s memory.’ I said, ‘You read my mind.’”
Dave said it was Gordon who took the lead in co-ordinating Sunday’s festival — which also included a silent auction of donated items and a draw for a signed guitar from the band Sum 41. “I just kind of rubber-stamped stuff. Keith Gordon really did the legwork.”
The parameters of the scholarship still have to be worked out, but Dave says that the recipient should be someone who captures Garrett’s qualities. “We’re not looking for a certain grade point or a certain average,” said Dave. “Garrett… always looked out for the little guy. He defended those people who needed to be defended, but even more than that — and we found out about this after the fact, these stories of him helping people from young and old — he didn’t do it for any kind of accolades, because he certainly didn’t tell us about it. We want the school staff to look for a student who puts others before themselves, and sees and appreciates the beauty in others that’s under the skin rather than the external. It’s kind of hard to put your thumb on who Garrett was, it’s kind of more of a citizenship thing than an academic thing.”
GarrettFest organizers hope to make it an annual event. The first effort got a thumbs-up from Dave. “When I walked in here, even before the doors opened, I was pleased just to see (it),” he said. “This is such a culmination of so many different people coming together to help out for this, and it put tears in my eyes, it really did. I was pleased just when I walked in the door. But to see people coming in and being a part of it, not only to help with the scholarship but just to be here to show their support, my wife and I just can’t say enough. It means the world to us.”