Remembering Andrew Graham

BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

He was the kind of person you don’t often meet.

At 8 years old, Andrew Gelston Graham earned a black belt in taekwondo. During a tournament, he received a rst-place medal. But instead of keeping it, he turned around and gave it to his opponent, whom Andrew felt was the true winner because he had sharper skills and Andrew had won on a technicality.

When he was 6, his younger sister hurt herself, and in the emergency room, Andrew would not leave his sister’s side. Medical personnel had to allow him to sit outside the curtain until they nished caring for her.

In his college years, Andrew would buy sandwiches and give them to homeless people as he passed through Union Station in Denver.

at’s what Andrew likely did the night he was later murdered in 2009, according to his mother.

She never knew about his generosity to the unhoused — she only later heard about it from police and his friends.

“But that was part of his charm. He didn’t boast,” Cyndi Gelston Graham said. “He didn’t self-aggrandize. ere was none of that. He just did kind things and didn’t expect any recognition.”

Andrew, a 23-year-old University of Colorado Boulder graduate who had plans for grad school, was found shot to death about 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2009, in the front yard of a home in the Willow Creek neighborhood of Centennial near County Line Road and Yosemite Street. After nearly 14 years, the nal person accused in Andrew’s killing was acquitted in a trial ending in June. ough Andrew wasn’t one to seek praise, his death spurred an outpouring of words of respect and admiration from friends and academics.

“Sometimes people are praised in death for a character greater than they possessed but not in Andrew’s case,” one of his friends wrote in a tribute to Andrew. “He truly was one of the most caring, humble, intelligent people. His gentle in uence on his peers made those around him better people. His absence is a loss to society.”

Standing out

Now 68, his mother fondly remembers how Andrew’s character shone through even as a small child.

When his young sister broke eggs on the oor at home, Andrew looked at his mother’s face, took his sister by the hand and hid her upstairs until their mom was no longer upset.

And as a young man, Andrew — who played ultimate Frisbee at CU Boulder and earned the nickname “Stitches” — had the respect of the young women around him.

“ e girls would watch the Frisbee team. ey would play a game, ‘marry, date or dump.’ Someone would pick out three men and everyone would have to answer who they would marry, date or dump. It became a tradition that we never even put Stitches into the game because he was an ‘automatic marry,’” a friend wrote, according to Andrew’s mother.

‘It was always about others’ Andrew was born in Mississippi after his mother met his father in nurses’ ight school for the Air Force.

Andrew got involved in math club and played the trumpet. A student in the Cherry Creek School District, Andrew played lacrosse, ran on the track team and excelled in school.

“But he was always rather quiet and shy,” his mother said. “It wasn’t until he got into college that he really blossomed in terms of his personality.”

His intellect led him to pursue engineering, a path where he made a name for himself in CU Boulder’s civil, environmental and architectural engineering department.

“Andrew was an outstanding student,” CU said in a 2013 news release, adding: “He was one of the rst students to follow the department’s rigorous Engineering Science track curriculum. He did independent research on water

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