RECORD SOUTH WHIDBEY
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2011 | Vol. 87, No. 93 | WWW.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.COM | 75¢
INSIDE: Senior moments, Sports, A12
SOUTH WHIDBEY REMEMBERS THOSE LOST IN CLINTON CRASH
Kindness, laughter, loyalty define three young lives BY BEN WATANABE South Whidbey Record
They were friends, brothers and sons. They were students, athletes and South Whidbey High School graduates. They had hopes and aspirations that will never be actualized — cut short by tragedy. Marcel “Mick” Poynter, Charles “Mack” Porter and Robert Bruce Knight are missed by those who knew them.
Robert Knight
Robert Knight
Charles “Mack” Porter III
Marcel “Mick” Poynter
Robert Knight lived like a running back. He envisioned the end zone — the goal — and he made his way there, no matter what got in his way. Knight was 22 when he died in a car crash just after midnight, in the earliest minutes of Nov. 12, 2011. The 2007 South Whidbey High
School graduate was a renowned fullback for the Falcon football team. In his senior season in 2006, Knight had 246 carries for more than 1,500 yards. That season he was voted the Cascade Conference Offensive Most Valuable Player. Though he was more than a football player — he also loved music and played guitar and drums,
which he first made out of buckets, pans and pots — that’s where he triumphed, said his parents Sharon and Bruce Knight. “That’s where he was the happiest. He was self-actualizing at football,” said Bruce Knight, who was the Falcons’ running back coach during his son’s two seasons at South Whidbey.
From the sidelines, he watched his son return from two months at Red Cliff Wilderness Therapy Camp in Utah to carry the ball on the first play of his senior season. That one play left Knight’s dad grateful to Falcon co-head coach Mark Hodson for giving his son a chance, and allowing him to be there for it.
“It is his story,” he added. “That one moment represents probably one of his greatest achievements ever.” The run, though not a 40-yard sprint to the end zone, represented his ability to set a goal, make a plan and follow it through. That first carry his senior season, after all, was what got him on track and got him out of Utah. His parents sent Knight to the outdoor therapy class to get him grounded. While there, Knight learned ways to focus on academics and respect himself and others. Along the way, he earned an “earth name” — Watchful Otter — which his parents said embodied his playful, loving spirit. Then they sent him to boarding school in Provo, Utah. He needed support his parents couldn’t give him, and they tried lots of methods. “We exhausted every resource we could exhaust to get through all this,” his dad said. “He went to boarding school, and he realized at that point he had to accomplish a SEE LIVES, A7
South Whidbey unites in grief to say farewell to accident victim BY BRIAN KELLY South Whidbey Record
LANGLEY — One smile did it all. Getting into trouble; getting out of trouble. Making new friends, keeping old ones. A crowd of more than 100 — family, friends, South Whidbey High School students and graduates — gathered in the sanctuary at South Whidbey Assembly of God Church Thursday to remember the life of Charles “Mack” Porter III. The memorial was the first of three for the young men killed in an early morning car crash north of Clinton on Nov. 12. A service for Rob Knight, 22, was scheduled for Friday at Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland, and a memorial for Marcel “Mick” Poynter, 20, will be held early next week in Langley. Porter, 19, grew up in Southern California but moved to Whidbey Island for his last year of high school. Todd Parrick said he raised Porter as one of his own. “He was a son to me,” Parrick said,
adding that he became a brother to the Parrick brood of Jake, Dillon, Brenna and Hunter. Parrick remembered the big dreams that Porter has as a kid, how he decided he wanted to be a Navy SEAL when he was 13. “The boys worked out every day together, they ran the mountains, and swam in the aqueduct,” he said. Parrick recounted one day out mountain biking with his son, Jake, but three miles up the mountain, Dillon and Mack decided they were going to run to the bottom, then swim across the aqueduct and wind up just two blocks from home. When Parrick got to the house, the pair hadn’t made it back yet. Ninety minutes later, after Parrick’s wife Julie asked where the two had gone, he decided to go look. As it started to get dark, Parrick went to the aqueduct and found his two boys still on the other side. Brian Kelly / The Record
SEE MEMORIAL, A17
Deann Houck hugs Steffanie Deisher at the close of Thursday’s memorial service for Charles “Mack” Porter III.