The same words come up again and again about Dorothy Legros: motivated, ambitious, driven, had plans — plans for a trip this summer to Haiti, plans for law school, plans to be a Supreme Court justice.
Dead at 22, younger than her newlywed parents were when they came to America, Legros will not realize any of these plans.
As reported by The Hustler and in an e-mail to the student body by Dean of Students Mark Bandas, Legros died at the scene of a two-car collision in Hampton, Ga., on March 8 while on spring break visiting her sister, Rachel. Her funeral was held Saturday at Alabanza Evangelical Baptist Church in Miami.
"I was extremely saddened," said Jamie Frazier, campus pastor for Jeremiah Generation. "Dorothy was a really a quiver in the hand of God, to be launched out into the world, into the legal world, to serve people."
Frazier met Legros her freshman year when she joined Jeremiah Generation’s welcoming committee.
"That speaks to her willingness to embrace new people and seek them out," he said. "Dorothy was dynamic and genuine, someone who could (interact) with different belief systems and values, without compromising her own."
"She greeted people at services with her beautiful smile, which was just the perfect job for her," said senior Brittney Fyffe. Fyffe and Legros were both members of Jeremiah Generation and Campus Crusade for Christ.
Legros's faith informed her actions and relationships, creating a woman confident in her purpose — and fun.
"She loved to dance. That was her passion — she just loved, loved, loved to dance," said senior Kristen Kuan, one of her roommates. "We would all always go out together, and she didn't really care about anyone around her, it was about us, and about her, living it up."
Her roommate Chisato Nishikawa recounted the night she and Legros followed a friend to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with a Harris Teeter-bought rose and a typed note (“Dear Kristen, I adore you. Please meet me by the bathroom”), and got their waiter to hand deliver it to her.
"We probably should have been studying," Nishikawa said, "but it was just fun. It was something to do. That was Dorie."
Friends mattered to Legros, in any situation.
“I had to make a decision about working at a summer camp — a Christian camp — for no money, and a dance camp where I would have been paid a lot of money each week," Fyffe said. "I knew where I could have been the most help, which was with the Christian camp, and finally, Dorie told me, ‘It’s not your summer, it’s God’s summer.’”
Legros struggled at times to reconcile the imperative to serve now as part of her faith and her education. After attending one of the featured panels in the Martin Luther King Jr. series in February with Nishikawa, Legros got choked up walking back — rare for her.
"We were walking back," Nishikawa said, "and Dorothy just said, 'You know, I want to do so much. Those people (on the panel) did so much, and they didn't graduate from Harvard — they just did it. I just want to get out of here so bad. I want to do that, I want to change people, change their lives.'"
Legros planned to go to law school — she had been accepted to Georgetown, but was waiting to hear back from other schools. She planned on a life of public service.
“She had a quote on her Facebook profile, 'Tomorrow is not promised, but my eternity is guaranteed,’ and that quote was something she lived by,” Fyffe said. "It was not about her, it was about God and what he was calling her to do and what he is calling us to do. She didn't do things for her own glory.”
