Kyle Thigpen

One of my friends passed away the other day.  I’m completely stunned…

I figured i’d share stories of some of the stuff we did over the years.

Kyle and i met when we were sophomores at CWU.  I was living by the Thunderbird motel–Kyle and a few of his friends were living a couple blocks away.  I met Kyle, Mitch,  Rob and Colby at a house party and quickly found common interests:  Schmidt’s beer and snowboarding. We all ended up hanging regularly and working up at Snoqualmie Pass during the winters.

While at CWU, Kyle was one of my best friends.  We ran in a large group of friends and partied it up pretty much non-stop.  Most of us hung out in the summers.  We’d have parties over at Kyle’s place just outside of town on Pfenning road.  The Pfenning house had an unused pasture outback where we’d sometimes have keggers.  Even though this pasture wasn’t being used, the electric fence was live.  We figured out that if you got a bunch of people together in a line, they all touched each other, guy on one end touched the fence, the guy on the opposite end would ground out and get shocked.  This was so rad.  We got a string of people together right by the keg.  We’d wait till someone had just finished pouring their cup and was taking that first swig of beer.  Then someone would touch the beer drinker and the person on the other end would touch the fence….BLAMO!  Beer drinker would get shocked to shit.  Beer spilling all over em…with a confused look on their face.  SO funny.

I’ve been on many shred trips with Kyle.  We covered mission, baker, whistler, timberline, meadows, white pass, sierra, kirkwood, squaw, northstar, alpine and heavenly.  One trip we took to Whistler in my ma’s Jeep Cherokee.  We were both about 22, didn’t have a bunch of cash and no itinerary.  We left late one Friday, from Kyle’s parents place up in Everett.  Once over the border, we turned on the radio and managed to get 107.7fm almost all the way up to Whistler–we were stoking on that.  I remember we were so tired on the drive that to stay awake we both talked our way through figuring out how many degrees Celsius there was in one degree Fahrenheit.  We used the outside thermometer gauge and did some math and somehow managed figured that shit out.  I don’t know how or why but we were both amped, high5-ing each other.  It was just enough stoke to get our tired asses to the Blackcomb parking lot in one piece.  Since we weren’t organized enough to line up a hotel…we both crashed in the back of the Jeep.  It was cold. After college we’d bump into each other occasionally.  We’d say, “remember that time we figured out that 1 degree Celsius equals 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit?!”  Total dorks.

Another time Kyle, myself, and a handful of other friends took a trip down to Tahoe. We were visiting friends that had moved down to work in the casinos one Veterans day weekend.  There’s a club inside Caesars Palace called Nero’s.  Every monday night Nero’s had dollar drink night.  Every week tons of people showed up…it was a huge party.  I remember ordering 20 shots of Jaeger and watching the waitress bring over a platter full of shots.  Needless to say, we ended up really drunk and made our way to the dance floor.  Once on the stage we were trying to impress ladies with our white guy dance moves and all of a sudden i see one of my buddies getting hemmed up by a couple angry dudes.  The next second five military dudes (Veterans day weekend) jump him.  Kyle, myself and the rest of our friends immediately jumped in and starting pulling dudes off.  A large brawl ensued.  I managed to land a few punches but then i got hit from the side and knocked the f out.

Next thing i knew, i was dancing with the girl that Kyle had been hitting on earlier in the night.  I was the only one left, Kyle and everyone else was gone.  Nero’s was pretty much empty.  I have no idea how long i was out.  The girl that Kyle had been hitting on, and that i was dancing with told me the cops showed up and arrested a couple of my friends, a few of the military dudes, and cleared most of the people out of the club.  Crazy.  After i caught up with everyone else, we found out where our friends were and started bailing them out.  We decided that we’d steer clear of Nero’s for a while.

In college Kyle told me stories of his family and their association with aviation.  His dream was to become a pilot.  Kyle graduated from CWU and started working at Alaska Air shortly after.  As soon as he was able to he enrolled in flight school.  Kyle put in his time, built up his hours, and eventually got a job as a pilot.  Kyle was so stoked when he finally got his pilots license.  I was proud of him–we all were.  He’s been flying professionally for a few years now out of Denver where he was living with his family.  He was planning on moving back up to Seattle shortly.

Kyle was a great friend, a great snowboarder, he was disciplined and determined. He had a dream, followed it, and reached it.  He had many friends, from working at Snoqualmie Pass, attending CWU and becoming a pilot.  Kyle loved his family, friends and we did him.

You can read more about Kyle on his Facebook page.

A college fund has been set up for Kyle and Di’s daughter Sophia at Key Bank.  It’s called the Kyle Thigpen Memorial Fund.  Tax deductible.

Here’s an article about a Seattle Sounders game in Denver where they held a moment of silence before the game start for Kyle. LINK

A memorial service will be held Saturday, September 12, 2009 at 1:00 – 4:00pm at the Museum of Flight, Boeing Field in Seattle, WA

We miss you.