Michael Kuch, the father of Adriana Kuch, a teen who last month took her own life just days after a violent bullying incident at her high school, spoke at a candlelight vigil for his daughter at Veterans Park in Bayville. The vigil was held on Saturday, March 11th -- the day Adriana "would've celebrated her 15th birthday.
Those immediate weeks after the sudden loss of a loved one, for many, are often a time when family withdraws from the public eye to grieve. But instead, Michael and his family — and a community that’s rallied behind them — busied themselves fighting for change. The back and forth inevitably sucked attention away from what should’ve been time spent reflecting on the loss of a beloved and bright-eyed girl, who was in the spring of life. That focus was intentionally brought back twofold at Adriana’s birthday at the park.
At the park, a group of about three dozen people — mostly family and friends — came together to share anecdotes and stories about who Adriana was: The one who didn’t think twice before jumping into a neighbor’s pool to, the one who took pride in teaching her young step sister how to ride a dirt bike, the one who gladly stepped in to help classmates with homework they couldn’t understand, sometimes without even being asked to.
“We’d give anything in the world if it meant having her back, even if for as little as five minutes,” she said.