Student's death cuts deep

In her too-short 17 years of life, Jenna Grace King attended Randolph College for only a brief time. But during that period, she impacted a great number of people.

A first-year student from Barhamsville, which is near Williamsburg, Jenna died last Thursday from injuries sustained in a car accident.

“Lots of people knew her well,” Dean of Students Sarah Swager said of the close-knit college community. “It’s not only impacting our students deeply, but also our faculty and staff.”

Jenna’s friends and family remember the determination and friendly energy with which she approached life.

She graduated early from New Kent High School and had “only just turned 17 the day we took her to college,” recalled her mother, Melanie King.

“She was intelligent but she was very determined, that was the main thing,” she said.

Jenna carried that determination in all aspects of her life, from classes and sports to future aspirations of going to law school and becoming secretary of state, her mother said.

“She would argue you to death — she would have been a good lawyer,” she said through somber laughs remembering her energetic daughter who wasn’t afraid of expressing her opinion. “She kept us hopping.”

Leland Coxe, Jenna’s faculty adviser at Randolph College, said she remained calm and mature even while taking a heavy course load.

“When she signed up for 17 units her first semester, I thought she was biting off more than she could chew,” he said. “I kept on expecting her to pop into my office at some time and saying ‘Uhh Dr. Coxe, I want to drop a class.’”

“This is a kid who should have been a senior in high school, and she was taking sophomore-level classes and holding her own.”

Jenna also “had a fun side to her personality,” Coxe said.

“That’s why she was such a joy to have in class,” he said. “Every day of this academic year, she’s been in one of my classes, and it’s really going to be hard seeing her seat empty … her absence is going to be just glaring.”

The young woman with striking blue eyes and a contagious smile also was “a huge advocate for animal rights,” her mother said. She grew up taking care of dogs, cats, fish, a chinchilla and guinea pig, “just about anything you could think of.”

Over her first Thanksgiving break at college, she brought home a kitten as a foster pet.

“She was always nice to everybody,” Melanie King said. “She always chose to help out the underdog.”

In addition to her mother, Jenna is survived by her father Billy; older brother, William King; and grandparents, Jim and Nancy Davis, and Jack and Ethel King.

Family and friends as well as members of the college community celebrated her life in a ceremony Tuesday in Barhamsville.

Students and school officials also plan to hold a candlelight vigil today and a campus memorial next week so faculty, staff and students can come together to talk about and remember Jenna, Swager said.

“When tragedies strike this campus, what we do is we come together and we support each other, and that’s exactly what’s happening now,” Swager said. “It’s not going away right away. We’re going to have a stained period of time where we’re all there for each other … It’s a community effort to heal from something like this.”