ANTIGO — A celebration of life for Raymond Crum, the 17-year-old who passed away at Wausau Aspirus Hospital May 20 following a car accident on County Road Y, was held Saturday night in the Listle Field parking lot.
Just before dusk, well over 50 people, mostly teenagers, lit and released sky lanterns, sending them floating eastward over the city.
Many of the kids wrote messages on the lanterns. On hers, Carmen Vasquez, one of Crum’s classmates and coworkers, had drawn a detailed picture of Garfield, a cartoon he liked. Several girls wrote, “June 8, 2024 — You’ll be missed. LLR.” The initials stood for “Long Live Raymond.”
Abby LaQue, who was Crum’s girlfriend, came up with the idea.
“I just thought that we should light them off and say our goodbyes, because not everybody got to,” LaQue said. “I got to at the hospital, but his close friends didn’t. It was because of how severe his injuries were — they had to keep him in an isolated state unfortunately. So we’re sending things that he liked and sending messages we wish we could tell him, things we didn’t get to say.”
The week prior, LaQue and her parents decided to donate earnings from their garage sale to Crum’s family. They handed over a large green plastic bottle with the money — over $1,200 — to his mother at the end of the night.
“The community really turned out,” said Shannon LaQue, Abby’s mother. “They not only paid for the items, but they also donated more.”
“People just stopped just to donate. People came and donated items to sell. A lot of people that were customers of his from Two Angels came. There were a lot of people who knew him in this town. I mean, it was really heartwarming.”
Abby said she and Crum had dated off and on for the better part of six years, and first met at her brother Caleb’s birthday party when he was in seventh grade, a day Caleb still remembers.
“We went to the bowling alley and he drank like a bunch of soda. He drank like 15 Sun Drops in the span of like half an hour. I couldn’t do that at all,” he said, as if still amazed. “I had him over a time after that and they would talk a little bit, but that’s how it happened.”
Like many others, Caleb characterized Crum as uncommonly unique.
“He was really funny — he absolutely beats me in any comedic sense I guess,” he said. “There was just something about him that was really special. I’ve never seen somebody like that before. He was just funny, he was creative. He did his own thing — he didn’t really follow anybody.”
Jodus Hughes, another of Crum’s friends, expressed similar sentiments.
“There’s not anybody like Raymond,” Hughes said. “You can ask anybody here. There’s not a single person like Raymond that we know. He had a different perspective. He just thought completely different — the way he thought, the music he listened to. He bought records. He had so many interests. He collected a lot of stuff.”
Elise Taylor, another that was apparently close with Crum, characterized him as a friend willing to bend rules that were made to be bent — in a way they appreciated.
“I remember we all got pulled over on our way to Appleton. It was me, Aaleigha, him, and Thomas. His mom had to come pick us up. He was too young to have that many people in the car — you’re only supposed to have two people when you just get your license,” she said, starting to crack up just by recalling the night in question. “He was always willing to risk it to make us happy.”
Others said he also often did things that caught them off guard.
“He was skipping down the hallway in school — just skipping down the hallway,” said Ashton Peschke. “It was passing time in school here between classes, and he was just skipping up and down the hallways in between everyone. It was crowded and he was just breezing through everyone.”
More than one student mentioned that at one point he had frequented the Mendlik Park basketball courts.
“It was 2021 or 2020 when I first met him, and he always wore flip flops when we would play basketball,” said Talyah Bussey. “I would be like, ‘Why are you wearing slides and trying to dunk?’ and he would say something funny. He always was kind. Usually, people that get to know me don’t really get to know me. They judge. That was one thing about him — he never judged.”
At night’s end, 100 lanterns for Raymond Crum had been released into the wind, then carried up and up — until, finally, they disappeared into the night.
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