I met Conor Hull in August of 2009 when we were both 14 years old. One of the many cool things about Gonzaga is it becomes something of a melting pot of young men from around the DMV. Conor grew up in Vienna, Virginia which might as well been Florida to me in grade school. While I don’t remember the exact moment we met, I do remember the subject of our first real conversation: Friday Night Lights. The movie, the show, it didn’t matter. We loved it all. Conor and I spent the next 17 years quoting our favorite lines to each other and laughing along the way.
Aside from Friday Night Lights, another quote that became a constant throughout our friendship was a bit more organic. It’s hard to remember the exact context over a decade later, but our friends were preparing for some sort of gathering and we needed a cooler. In fact, we needed Conor’s cooler. I don’t remember anything particularly special about this cooler. It was kind of….just a cooler. Regardless, the only option was for Conor Hull who lived in Vienna, Virginia to find time to drive said cooler to my parent’s house in Bethesda, Maryland and leave it at the basement door. Once the plan was in place, Conor assured me of it’s success:
“It’ll be there.”
-Conor Hull
Sure enough, the next time I checked the backdoor of my basement, there was the cooler with a note inside that said, “It’ll be there.”
Like a lot of friend groups, once we have a line, we repeat it constantly. The context didn’t even have to make sense, Conor loved to work in “Hey Hansy, it’ll be there” into as many conversations as possible (Conor never called me Chris again after meeting my Grandfather Hans Jurgen Schultz)
Conor’s lesson here is about friendship. When a friend makes a promise, they follow through. That was Conor Hull. A beloved, goofy, energetic character who would rip the shirt on his back and give it to you (no really, Conor was prone to ripping his shirt off).
The world lost Conor on Monday March 16. The amount of grief, sadness, and confusion in the wake of that loss is impossible to put to paper. What wasn’t lost, however, are the memories of the friendships we all cherished with Conor. That’s the one thing we can all carry with us forever. However much sadness or anger one feels because of our collective loss, I encourage you to focus on your core memories with Conor. Trust me, I know it’s not easy, but if you continue to fight through sadness, the good memories are waiting there.
In the words of Conor himself:
“It’ll be there.”
