Father of NIU shooting victim: 'Grief is the price you pay for love'

Selflessness is not an altogether common condition afflicting our kind.

Let's face it, the average person rarely gets from the parking lot to the Slurpee dispenser without taking minor penalties for elbowing and interference.

Narcissism has spread in pandemic fashion, passed from one generation to the next, and, yet, in the midst of such a world lived Dan Parmenter.

A giant of a man at 6-foot-5 and only 20 years old, with a sweetness belying his size, he opened doors for others, literally, and in every way.

His friends and adorers numbered that of someone who lived to be 80, but his greatest admirer suffers anew on this Father's Day.

"I know he wants me to move forward, but … there's a big hole in my life," says Dan's father, Gary, still struggling to find the words. "I know I'm not alone.

"What I realize now is that the stories I heard from kids who knew him in high school, from his rugby mates, his fraternity brothers at NIU, it was just scratching the surface of what he did for people.

"He naturally looked out for everyone."

That made him the quintessential anchor in tugs -- tug-of-war -- say his brothers at Pi Kappa Alpha. Never the type to "lay on the rope," he always had his back off the ground, dug in with his heels, fighting until the fight was finished -- and won.

At York High School, where he was an honors student, Dan was voted the Sportsmanship Award by his football teammates his junior and senior years.

"He thought that to have your friends vote that to him was the most incredible honor," Gary remembers. "He didn't care to have the best stats. He wanted to see others succeed, to be a leader. And he wanted to win."

Now, you might say he was also the kind that would throw his body in front of another to save a life.

But what kind is that?

Just how many 20-year-olds do you know on a college campus who sit in the front row with their girlfriend on Valentine's Day, who would offer the ultimate sacrifice?

The same kind that would hang with the less popular kids in high school, who would stick up for those getting bullied, for those who couldn't stick up for themselves.

The kind who once, as a child himself, helped secure the release of a smaller tyke from a tree.

Too good to be true, right?

On Feb. 14 at NIU, Dan Parmenter shielded his girlfriend, Lauren Debrauwere, taking bullets intended for her. The love of his life lived, as Dan and four other students at Cole Hall died.

"I got home just after 4 p.m. and my daughter, Kristen, phoned to say there was a shooting at NIU," says Gary Parmenter. "I watched some of the early news reports, but it was late in the day and I thought Dan was probably over at the (Northern) Star.

"I imagined what it was like for parents waiting to hear from their kids, but I wasn't worried, and if you knew Dan you'd understand why.

"About 20 minutes later, I got a call from Kishwaukee Hospital. It happened so fast. The second I heard the voice I knew. She told me they had my son there. I don't really know the rest."

The shock erases the details. A fog shrouds the moment. Anguish clouds the memory.

One moment, your life is OK.

But from that moment forward, it's just life, dominated by the deafening silence, the ticking of a clock, one debilitating minute after another.

It's a race against your mind, feeding the good memories to fight the hunger of tears -- and sometimes the urge to quit.

"People loved him, and that's the little bit of salvation I can take out of it," Gary says, often stopping to gather his composure. "Although he's gone, I know he's still with us, looking out for us."

Only recently, Gary learned that Dan had been attending class with Lauren all along and was in the process of officially adding the class to get credit hours.

It was no fluke that he sat in Cole Hall that day, as the story has been told, and that helps Gary with the grieving process, which has rarely been tougher than it was this week, preceding Father's Day.

"The pain isn't as frequent, but sometimes it's worse now when it grips me," Gary explained. "It's the disbelief that he was taken in that way.

"It's that I miss him so much for all the things we would have been doing together. You drive by a tennis court or a golf course, or you see families going on vacation. Your heart stops.

"The other side of it is, I'm enormously proud of the person he was, and the way he lived -- and the way he died.

"One detail I learned was Dan was praying for them after he and Lauren were shot. I'm not sure what else happened, but I know he endured the situation as a man, and with great dignity.

"And every day, something amazing comes out of this."

The tributes are too numerous to mention, coming from every corner of Dan's life in Elmhurst, to Gary's hometown of Westchester, to NIU and back.

There are several scholarship funds in Dan's name, and perhaps summing up best what he meant to even his opponents, the Greeks at Northern named the tugs trophy after him.

Says Gary, "That's what brotherhood is all about, all pulling toward the same end."

Beyond his heroism, and a startling lifelong altruism, was a son as good as a father could ever want, one who remembered to phone his mother and sister on Valentine's Day -- to tell them he loved them.

Clearly confident beyond his years, Dan was not ashamed to be human in a world of inhumanity.

"You try to find ways to let go a little bit," Gary says quietly. "You don't want to be angry, but I'd do anything to bring him back …

"I go to grief support and I've learned that grief is the price you pay for love. You can't hide from it."

It does, however, give Gary Parmenter a chance to remind others of what they have.

"I tell people frequently to hug your kids tight," he said. "I've talked to so many people who have lost children, and they're still missing that child 20 years later.

"Hug your kids and tell them you love them. Let them know it. Really ... let them know it. I wish I could tell Dan just one more time."