| Saturday, November 21, 2009 |
Tributes
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In the pictures that span her too-short 26-year life, Kirsten (Brock) Jordan is always smiling.
She could see the good in anyone and could make whoever she was listening to feel like they had her full attention.
"She was always wanting to know what was going on," said her sister, Megan Brock.
Jordan died in a car accident on Aug. 25 as she was returning to Salt Lake City, where her husband Chad attends Brigham Young University.
Jordan was adopted by Loyal and Valerie Brock from Korea when she was 5 months old.
"We saw her picture and said 'Of course we'll take her,' " said her mother. "The first time we met was at SeaTac Airport."
Jordan had a cleft lip and pallet, meaning her top lip was split in the middle and a portion of bone in her upper mouth was missing. She had more than a half-dozen surgeries over the years to correct her condition. As a child she was tentative, her mother said. "Kirsten was very cautious. She was not going to take risks."
That attitude soon fell by the wayside. As she grew older, she took up skateboarding and snowboarding and even learned to high dive. She took up gymnastics in junior high.
"She loved the trampoline, (she) would just jump forever," said her mother. "She was always dragging the skateboard around."
But even as she pushed her boundaries, she kept herself in line. "She was the great peacemaker in our family," her father said. And those gymnastics skills came in handy when she baby-sat her brothers. She often designed gymnastics competitions to keep them busy. "She could get the boys to do anything," he said.
Jordan was in Running Start and graduated from both Central Valley High School and Spokane Falls Community College in 1996. She then attended Brigham Young University. It was in 1998 when love struck.
Jordan was home on a break from college when she met Chad Jordan, the best friend of her best friend's boyfriend. Chad Jordan remembers sitting by the stereo the first night they met, talking about music. "It seemed like the conversation flowed so easily," he said.
During the summer of 1998, Jordan came home to Spokane Valley during her vacation. She and Chad Jordan spent time together every day. When she went back to Salt Lake City to finish school, Chad Jordan followed her. "I wanted to make sure she didn't find somebody else better," he said. "I knew she was the most wonderful, caring person I had ever met. I never thought I could love anyone as I did (her) until I met her."
They were married on Aug. 21, 1999, shortly after she graduated from BYU. She started working as an intern at Tri-Connections, an agency that served the developmentally disabled. She gave the agency's clients job training and life-skills training and worked her way up to assistant manager. "She was so smart and such a hard worker," her husband said.
During this time the couple planned their life together. They would head out on a hike and discuss children, careers, where they wanted to live. "We thought three would be a good number," her husband said on the number of children they planned to have. "Those walks are some of the most important times to me."
They were off to a good start. Daughter Ella was born earlier this year. Chad Jordan has two semesters of school left and the plan was that Jordan would quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom when Ella was a year old.
In August the couple, along with their daughter and dog, Daisy, were returning home to Salt Lake City after visiting family in Spokane Valley. Chad Jordan drove while Kirsten slept, belted into her reclined front seat. He still isn't sure what happened, recalling only that the car slid sideways off the road and hit a guardrail. Kirsten was killed, along with Daisy. Chad and daughter Ella, who was safely strapped in her car seat, suffered only scratches.
Now Chad is contemplating life as a single father, something that wasn't in any of their plans. BYU has offered him a full scholarship to complete his final two semesters, which Chad isn't sure if he'll accept. He has no family in Utah and is taking this semester off to make plans and decide what to do next. But he knows he'll finish school one way or another, because that was what they had planned together.
"I just still can't believe she's gone," he said.
Kirsten Jordan's life has provided the inspiration for her sister Megan to get her life on track. Megan, 24, said she hadn't done much with her life since graduating from high school. She is back in school now, something her sister knew about before her death.
"I remember her saying how proud of me she was," said Megan.
Megan also is trying to be more considerate of others, something her sister always did. "I'm living my life totally different now that I was before."
