The East Gym track and field will be filled with students, faculty and family Sunday as they honor the memory of a 2009 graduate at the second annual Walk Your Heart Out event.
The 5K, which begins at 1 p.m., will be hosted by the Eating Awareness Student Sub-Committee, Alpha Phi sorority and Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. All proceeds from this year’s event will be donated to both the Steven Kovacs Memorial Scholarship Fund at Binghamton University and the Addiction Crisis Center in Binghamton.
Kovacs died July 8, 2009, after he went into cardiac arrest at a friend’s house in Carmel. According to Joni Kovacs-Howe, Kovacs’ mother, Kovacs had bronchial pneumonia, was coughing, threw up and went into cardiac arrest, which led to his death. Kovacs was on prescription medications including Adderrall and Xanax at the time of his death, she added.
Because Kovacs’ death is still under police investigation, Kovacs-Howe could not divulge additional details.
She will speak at Sunday’s walk to raise awareness on the importance of looking out for friends.
“I was told that if an ambulance was called he could have been saved,” she said. “A lot of kids don’t realize that. They think they can’t call [911] because they will be in trouble if drugs or alcohol are involved. They get scared.”
Kovacs’ death came just more than a year after the death of his friend and fellow Phi Kappa Psi brother William Gage, who was a student at BU until spring 2007.
According to Kovacs-Howe, the two died under similar circumstances: both at friends’ homes.
Kovacs’ friends and family remember him for being self-motivated and having the “biggest smile ever,” Kovacs-Howe said.
While at BU, Kovacs, a psychology major, spent hours researching at the Institute for Child Development as well as working as a personal trainer at FitSpace gym.
Upon graduation, Kovacs was accepted to work toward his doctorate in psychology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He had plans to become a school psychologist.
“I miss Steve, I really do, and I really wish he was still here,” said Henry Mendez, an ‘09 graduate who was in the same fraternity as Kovacs.
Mendez is an emergency medical technician and wants to spread the word to college students on how to react in a life-or-death situation.
“This made me realize that more people should be aware of how to do CPR and what to do if someone is unconscious,” Mendez said. “He influenced me that way.”
Joe Clirisi, an ‘07 BU graduate and Kovacs’ big brother in the fraternity, said Kovacs was always fun-loving and had a “thrill” for life.
“He wrote a poem and one of the lines was ‘remember what is important in life: knowledge, work, humanity and morality,’ ” Clirisi said. “He also always said ‘ existence is a blessing.’ Those are quotes he wanted us all to live by.”
Tickets for Sunday’s walk will cost $8 per person, and $6 each for groups of 15 in the New University Union today from 1 to 4 p.m. Tickets will also be sold Sunday for $9 each. Currently about 150 are registered to attend the event.
During the event there will be performances by Kickline, as well as the cheer and dance teams. Music will be provided by DJ Luca Basch of Phi Kappa Psi.
The event was coordinated by Rebecca Fraid, president of the EASSC and a member of Alpha Phi.
Kovacs’ parents plan to have a bench built outside of the ICD in Kovacs’ memory by commencement. Two phrases will be engraved on a plaque on the bench. One, a message from his parents, will be “Your smile illuminates the world.” The other, a Latin phrase that was important to Kovacs, “animis opibusque parati,” meaning always prepared, forever learning. Kovacs’ parents also plan to have a tree planted in their son’s memory outside of FitSpace once the East Gym is reconstructed.
“I like to picture Steve and Will together doing wonderful things wherever they are,” Kovacs-Howe said.