RIP Nick

Family, friends remember Napa teen
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

By CHRIS TRIBBEY
Register City Editor

While Napa police work on reconstructing the accident that killed Napa High student Nick Gruenhagen last week, family and friends of the 16-year-old wrestler remembered a vibrant young man who liked "anything powered by gas" and stayed involved in a variety of Napa community activities.

"There wasn't one person I could name that didn't like him," said 23-year-old Levi Gruenhagen, Nick's brother. "The last time I saw him, I told him I'd wrestle him. I never did. Now, I'd just tell him I love him."

The accident occurred Friday morning on Lincoln Avenue, when Gruenhagen's new motorcycle slammed into the side of a car driven by 69-year-old Napan Analee Chambless, who was treated at Queen of the Valley Hospital over the weekend for multiple lacerations to her face, torso and wrist.

Levi Gruenhagen said Nick had bought the motorcycle two weeks before the accident, and Nick had convinced his parents to let him buy it after saving up several months worth of paychecks from his job at Cinedome Theaters. "He put down the down payment and paid for the insurance. He wanted to pay for it, but (his parents) put the rest on credit," Levi Gruenhagen said.

He added that a week before the accident, Nick was pulled over on the bike in Napa for driving more than 100 mph in a 25 mph zone, but got off with a warning. "I would have given him a ticket," Levi Gruenhagen said.

Napa Police officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. It is not yet clear whether excessive speed had anything to do with the fatal accident.

Nick loved cars, bikes and planes, both big and small, Levi Gruenhagen said. Nick had just gotten his private pilot's license, and planned on spending the summer riding dirt bikes, building model cars, and working on his most prized possession: a 1963 Nash Metropolitan car.

"He loved that car more than anything," Levi Gruenhagen said.

Friends and family of the 16-year-old who loved speed and fitness are honoring him this week, painting "RIP Nick" on their car windows, to let the community know how much he will be missed.

Napa High wrestling head coach Gil Schmidt notified Nick's teammates about his death over the weekend, and said several may attend his funeral Friday. "The family was always there to support us. Now we'll be there to support him," Schmidt said.

He remembered a vibrant teen who tried hard at everything he did.

"We lost a family member," Schmidt said. "You get really close to these kids."

Schmidt said that no one on the team was surprised when the teen got his new motorcycle, a Honda 600 F4 I. "Riding a bike was not unique for him. He liked vehicles," he said.

Nick had been working at Cinedome for less than six months, according to coworkers.

"He was a guy who acted nice around everybody. He tried harder than he needed to fit in," said Napa High graduate Peter Stonis, who worked with Nick.

Stonis and other employees at Cinedome remembered Nick being very excited about his new motorcycle, which he rode to work nearly every day.

"He was waiting a long time for that bike. And it took a lot out of his family (financially) to get it for him," Stonis said.

Cinedome employee Stephanie Reynolds said she'll remember Nick as a very charismatic young man who made others around him happy.

"He always made me laugh. And he was nice looking," she said with a smile.

Nick Gruenhagen attended West Park Elementary School, Redwood Middle School and was going to be a senior at Napa High next year. He played in the Napa Youth Soccer League, Napa Recreation Basketball League, Napa Saints Pop Warner Football League, and was on the Napa High football team during his sophomore year.

He was also a member of the Napa High Concert Choir, and planned to attend U.T.I. Technical School in Arizona after he graduated.

The county coroner completed the autopsy of Nick on Monday, determining that the teen died due to multiple traumatic injuries to his chest, according to sheriff's Capt. Mike Loughran. It will take up to three weeks before the county gets back toxicology reports to determine if he had any drugs or alcohol in his system.

"About the only thing he drank was Gatorade. He didn't smoke cigarettes, wouldn't touch drugs ... he wasn't into any of that," Levi Gruenhagen said.

A candlelight vigil for Nick Gruenhagen will be held tonight at 8:30 at the Napa High School quad. His funeral service will be held Friday at First Christian Church, 2659 First St. in Napa, at 11 a.m.

Napa Police are still looking for witnesses to the accident. Anyone with information is asked to call 257-9554.

Mood Swings

wow... it certainly is entertaining to read through my blog when I can point out exactly where the mood swings happened. Sometimes there are several within the same post, and I'm sittin back thinking... "Wow... was a menstrual that day, or was that a manic moment?" of course it could be both. Really not much I want to talk about here. My daddy issues are continuing, but I don't see the need to subject anyone else to it any more than I already have. So I guess I will leave it at that for today.

Daddy Issues

I have come to the conclusion that my father was put on this earth to create lives and then make sure that they are rather thoroughly fucked up. He's good at it too. Not one of his five children, myself included, has managed to reach adulthood without some serious, and I mean SERIOUS, issues. I think my oldest brother and I have it the worst, as far as issues that are obviously daddy related. Sean hates dad. Won't talk to him, at all. Wrote him a letter detailing exactly what kind of piece of shit he is and ended it with a demand not to contact him or his children. Me, I tried the same general thing. Wrote several "don't talk to me" letters I say several because I kept breaking my own decision. I don't know whats harder, trying to carry on some semblance of a relationship with my father, or not speaking to him at all. Im not very good at either. Every promise he has made since I was 14 he has broken. Yes, all of them. He's just recently made another, but I just know that one is going to crumble too. I almost want to tell him nevermind... it hurts less if I break it off before he has the chance, I can't be mad at him for that. I want to sit down, and have a conversation with his girlfriend, and tell her that I'm done trying to fight her for his love. She's won. But I can't find a way to give my speech of defeat without wanting to throw in something horribly catty along the lines of "It must be really great to know that your prize traded his children for you. A great man, that one is" I remember when I was 16 years old he sat on his back porch and told me that if he had to, he'd leave her and go back to the west coast, because nothing is more important than his children. The next time I saw him was more than a year later, when he did. Although his decision to do so had nothing to do with us, and if it weren't for my drunken aunt, who he was staying with, I don't think I would ever have known he was back. He sat in her leaving room while I was on the phone with her wanting to know if he was alive because no number I had for him would reach him, and held up his hands to her, mouthing the words "I'm not here" She broke down in drunken sobs and told him she couldn't lie to this "baby" (that would be me) and threw the phone at him. At this point he acted like nothing had happened and made plans to pick me up for the weekend. When I got there he said he was done with Carol, he was staying on the west coast to watch me grow up. I was 3 weeks from graduating high school. 2 days after I went home he was on a bus back to Missouri, having left instructions for my aunt not to tell me he'd done it until after he left, and not to tell me his new number at all. He missed my graduation. He missed every major milestone in my life. I took to calling him the day before my birthday to remind him when it was, ever since the first year he was gone and he called the day after, which would have been he and my mom's 19th anniversary. Even with the 24 hour warning, he usually failed to call anyway. There hasn't been so much as a birthday card since he left. I kind of figure now that he's made his choice, and it isn't me. I don't know why I still try so damned hard to change his mind. I'm almost 20 years old, and I still cry myself to sleep most nights because my daddy doesn't love me. That shit has to stop sometime, and I don't know how to make it go away. It only gets worse. The extension of that feeling is "my daddy doesn't love me, what makes me think any man can/does/will/should" This thought either leads to long bouts of meaningless one night stands if I'm single, or ending a relationship if Im not. I don't want what my father has done to control my life, but it does. It always has. When I was 11 years old, and he was still daddy, and I was still his little princess, he told me it was my job to make sure he didn't have more than 3 beers a night. I felt like a failure every time he came home from work and downed a six pack before bed. He told me when I was 14 that the business trip he went on wasn't a business trip at all, he'd gone to missouri to spend a weekend with a woman he'd met on the internet. He said he was going to leave my mother after the holidays to be with her, and he was going to take me with him because he loved me. He left on halloween morning, and when he went to missouri, he didn't take me with him. My father has lied to me and hurt me all throughout my teens. And, I'm sure if I allow it, he will continue to do so for the rest of his life. I don't know if he even knows how badly he has hurt me over the years, or how important he could have been in my life. I don't even know if he would care if he did know. He seems to be happy in his new life with carol, and without me. I just wish I knew how not to be daddy's little girl anymore.

Fear and Self-Loathing in Waterford

I am going through a period of self-loathing at the moment. It's hard to watch friendships that were nurtured for years crumble because of distance. A friend of mine in Cali called me a few days ago. Her fiancee had left her, and apparently everyone saw this coming but her. Where a good friend would have sat and felt her pain and cried with her, I spent over an hour resisting the urge to tell her to spare her long distance bill and call someone who cares. Just two days later, another friend called to tell me her husband wants a divorce. I had to fight the very same urge. For the same reasons. No one thought these relationships would work. All the odds said no. In both cases, both parties and been unfaithful, and lied, and lets face it, 15 is entirely too young to know who it is you will spend your life with. If I had settled down with the man I was with at fifteen, I would be miserable now. To compound my feeling that I am emotionally betraying these girls who made up so much of my high school years, after a long conversation with my niece I discovered that she is almost exactly the same person I was at her age. This worries me because I know exactly what kind of person I was in the year that followed. She is better than that. I feel bad because I was always around her then, I was her influence, and now that she's making the same mistakes that I did, I can't help but think that this is my fault. I'm sure her father would agree, but he's blamed every imperfection in her personality on me since she was a baby. it's my fault she's mouthy, it's my fault she curses, it's my fault she tends to be a bit bitchy (that is Seanspeak for outspoken) But from what she tells me it isn't just my influence, but her father as well. She is developing the same kind of issues I had (have) Sean has a new toy, and doesn't pay as much attention to her as he should. But I know what daddy issues lead to too. This doesnt look good, and from half a continent away, I don't know what I can do.

Technical Diffuculties

Ok, haven't written in a while... I assure whoever is out there in blogger land, I was not intentionally neglecting you, I was the victim of technical difficulties. This situation has been remedied, and I am now trying to figure out if I have anything worth while to say... well I have 4 tickets to montgomery gentry friday night, and no one to go with, this is because one stepsister is working, I can't get ahold of the other, and I don't really know anyone else. I hate bein the new kid... it isnt usually this hard to give away concert tickets. I know people who are going but the problem is I only get along with one of them, and he's with the others... that and with rumors flying about my supposed past "relations" with this man, it would not do for me to be spending time with him. I don't want to give Mike ANY reason to think Im doing a single thing in his absence that I wouldn't do with him standing beside me. My sister and I have adopted 4 baby field mice, which we must feed every few hours. ahh the joys of infant animals. but they are SO adorable. really, very very very very very very very very very cute. that's pretty much it. Mike will be home the 28th.. Im very excited. yay!

Resolution

I've been slacking... all is well, I am happy and healthy and still very much in love. Im also very tired.. I just thought I should do at least enough follow up on the last post to clarify that nothing has changed between mike and I, we are fine. as far as the bar goes, I should be able to go back, they just want me to lay low for a little bit. so yeah... crisis over.

Underage Drinking and Waitress Licking

Every minute of every day, something can happen to change your world. Sometimes the change is for the best, sometimes not. Sometimes it's permanent, and sometimes only a temporary inconvenience. This has been a weekend of those moments. At two separate occasions, by two separate people, I have been told something that made my heart drop to my toes. I've lost my social outlet, and I'm afraid I may be losing something infinitely more important than that. I can't go to my bar anymore. They got caught selling to minors, and even though I have never so much as taken a sip of alcohol at that bar, I can't go back. Mike told me today that he may have done something bad. He said he didn't kiss someone else, or sleep with them. He just did a few body shots off of a waitress at the bar. OK, so he didn't kiss her, he just licked alcohol off of her. That makes it all fucking better doesn't it? How can someone do that if they actually love a person? I haven't so much as danced with anyone else since he's been gone, and he's using some chick as a shot glass. Maybe I'm overreacting. Part of me wants to say... well at least he told me about it, he didn't have to, I would never have known. And then I wonder if he was just trying to see what my reaction would be, find out what he could get away with. But that is one hell of a risk to take to test a boundary. Those who know me best are well aware that I am a jealous little bitch, and as a result of most of my boyfriends cheating on me, incredibly suspicious and terrified of having the same thing happen again. Tim got away with it for five months, until he messed up and got one of the others pregnant. Casper never really got away with it, because invariably the other woman would show up on my doorstep at 2 am looking for a fight. Ricky did it the entire time we were together, didn't bother to hide it. Of course I was so afraid of getting my ass kicked that I would never leave. Larry did it, more than once, and I only really found out about how much long after we were over. I don't know about Jason, but I doubt it, the boy was a puppy, and really didn't have a whole lot of friends. At all. Paul did, with Anne. Seth did, with Anne's friend Crystal. I don't think short mike did, just because, well, the boy hasn't been laid in more than 2 years, and there's a reason. I don't think Chris did. We were together every day, he wouldn't have had a whole lot of time. Orion... I don't know or care. I know Garrett didn't, I don't think he ever would do anything like that to anyone. I don't know why I felt the need to make a list. Maybe I'm just dwelling on something I should be trying to forget. I just know I'm hurt, and scared, and confused. I don't know what, if anything, I should do.

Pissy

I don't really want to talk right now. It wouldn't really make a difference.

Commitment by LeeAnn Rimes

What I'm lookin' for
Is a love that's forever
Someone who can capture my soul in a heartbeat
And stay for all time
What I'm prayin' for
Is a match made in Heaven
Someone who will worship my body
And still put his heart on the line

Chorus:
Commitment
Someone who'll go the distance
I need somebody with staying power
Who'll make me go weak in the knees
Commitment
And everything that goes with it
I need honor and love in my life from somebody
Who's playin' for keeps

What I'm searchin' for
Is a man who'll stand by me
Who will walk through the fire
And be my flame in the night
I won't settle for
Less than what I deserve
A friend and a lover who'll love me
For the rest of my life

Chorus

Yeah, I've had promises broken
Three words left unspoken
They just left me achin' for more
But I've fought temptation
I won't be impatient
There's one thing that's worth waiting for

commitment
and everything that goes with it
I need honor and love in my life from somebody
Whos playin for keeps

Chorus

Boring

Today was pretty much just like any other wednesday. I took my brother to school, went back to sleep til it was time to pick him up from school, made dinner, did dishes, and went to the bar. But before I went to the bar I talked to mike... he's coming home on leave the 26th! yay!! 3 weeks, and then I can see him. I cant wait. The bar was dead, I lost miserably at pool, and darts, laughed when Bonnie's Mike sang blue christmas as porky pig, and came home around midnight. now Im here, writing and talkin with Mike on yahoo... not a whole lot to say I guess. yup. Im boring.

Home Piercing dont's and sleep deprivation

last night was... interesting. It began with tryin to pierce my older sister's belly button with a sewing needle (didn't work as planned, we scrapped the idea and shes going to get it pierced at the same time I get my next tat when the taxes come back.) and then I was winding down watchin television at about 2 am when the cell phone rang... unexpected of unexpectedness it was my dear friend Steve from Cali. He was upset when he called, but by the time we hung up (at 6 am... *snore*) his ribs hurt from laughter. at 7 am I took my lil brother to school, and I actually managed to hold it together and stay awake until 11 am (I think that's from the hour and a half of yoga I did this morning... that shit wakes me up quick) I woke up again at 2:30 to pick my bro up from school, came home, did dishes, watched Signs, ate dinner, went and got ice cream, did dishes again, got some cheat codes my lil bro wanted for Vice City, watched TV, and now Im back online blogging to kill time in hopes that mike signs on. I haven't talked to him today at all, I was so spaced out that everytime I thought of calling him I got side tracked, and then there was the time I realized it was 7:30 am when I wanted to call him. Im sure he wouldn't appreciate his phone ringin at 6:30 in the morning, nor do I think his roommates would be real receptive to the idea... so basically Im rambling at this point. I guess that means I should stop subjecting you, my dear readers, to this continued blahness. Im tired...