Remembering Cole Sullivan

Cole Sullivan was a freshman with a spirit unlike any other. His jokes made family and friends smile, and his personality showed he truly cared for those he was close to.

On Feb. 7, Sullivan died in a car accident. He was a member of the honor choir and the wrestling team and had been going to Nixa since sixth grade. Ever since he started at Nixa, those around him found him as a very special person.

“We were extremely close,” freshman and best friend Payton Coursey said. “I went to his house five or six times a week. Every so often we’d go out to eat and have fun.”

Always full of energy, Sullivan never let a dull moment pass by, which made the memories Coursey has even more special.

“He was more hyper than the people I usually hang out with,” Coursey said. “He was one of the [few] people I could connect with.”

Sullivan was a social person, and he stood out among his peers.

“He was a very outwardly person,” freshman Kiya Ward said. “He always brought life into any type of conversation.”

Friends say he was a good listener for those who needed a kind ear.

“He was always there,” Ward said. “He brought me out of the shadows I was in. He was just a really amazing person.”

Sullivan was especially loved by his family, who cherished every moment they spent with him.

“He was the sweetest boy I had ever met,” Sullivan’s mother, Jennifer Morelock, said. “If you were lucky enough to know Cole or be a part of his life, you never left without a smile.”

Morelock said Sullivan’s personality is what made him stand out to others.

“Cole was the most amazing soul,” Morelock said. “Cole was the type of person who liked everyone and wanted to make people smile.”

Ward agrees with that sentiment.

“He had the ability to make you smile no matter how down you were feeling,” Ward said. “It didn’t matter what was going on, you couldn’t stop yourself from smiling.”

That feeling of comfort made it easy to be around him, Morelock said.

“He didn’t care what anyone else thought,” Ward said. “He was himself and he was always the best person he could be.”

Morelock said she hopes that the people who were close to Sullivan learned something from him.

“What I will remember most about Cole is his love for me and everyone he was close to,” Morelock said. “I hope [what] the world and all of the other students learned from Cole was how to be a kind human being.”

The biggest thing and really the only focus you should have when writing a story like this is to make everyone happy that it was written. You never want to see family or friends upset at what you wrote, and it's my belief I was able to accomplish that. Using his personality as the crux, I was able to shape a positive outlook on Cole, from his hobbies to his friends to how he was around his family. In interviewing his best friend to his mother, I was able to find the side of Cole his friends and family would want to talk about, which made it less stressful for me as a writer to not have to worry about if I was addressing the things they wanted to be addressed about Cole. Hopefully, I will never have to write another story like this, but I believe that this experience in finding areas of joy in those who grieve over loss taught me a lot and that the Wingspan benefited from this piece in the sense that it will give others the chance to know Cole if they never did and give those who mourn his loss closure in a world around them that seems to have fallen apart.