Recent Nicholas School graduate Chris Beauvais, a generous friend and hiking enthusiast, passed away Saturday morning at age 29 due to injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.
Beauvais, who studied as an undergraduate at Brevard College, graduated in Fall 2010 from the Nicholas School of the Environment with two degrees: a master of environmental management and a master of forestry. After completing his studies, Beauvais launched an environmental consulting business that quickly took on contacts, said his father, Dan Beauvais.
“[Chris was] someone who lived his life to the very fullest,” Amy Morsch, a close friend who first met Chris at their Nicholas School orientation in the Fall of 2008, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. “Chris gave us an example of humanity that will not soon be forgotten, and that is an amazing gift.”
Chris’ father echoed Morsch’s sentiments, noting the overwhelming response on Chris’s Facebook page.
When Chris’ father and mother, Sue, began searching for photographs to include in the funeral slide show, they posted on Chris’s Facebook page asking his friends to post photos of him. Three-hundred photographs came pouring in.
“He just had a huge network of friends and an infectious smile,” Dan said. “The support from his Duke family and his extended family and friends has just been outstanding.”
Daniel Richter, Chris’ advisor and mentor as well as a professor of soils and forest ecology, reflected on the many memories he and Chris shared.
“We loved to hike and he loved to ask me to go hiking, specifically ‘to get into trouble.’ Usually this meant getting rained upon or having to walk across hill slopes too steep to walk on,” Richter wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.
Richter oversaw the completion of Chris’s masters project, “An Analysis of Post-Clearcut Coast Woody Debris in Intensively Managed Forests.” He will deliver a eulogy at Beauvais’ funeral, which will be held at the Duke Chapel on Friday at 2 p.m.
“[People] should know that he gave the best hugs, and had an ease about him; they should know that he was going crazy during the first half of the Duke-UNC game this year; that he worked harder than he played—and he played damn hard; that he was as generous to a stranger as he was to a friend,” Morsch said.
Chris lived in Durham with his sister Elizabeth, Nursing ’04 and a neonatal nurse practitioner at the North Carolina Children’s Hospital.
The funeral will be streamed live on the Nicholas School website, and a bonfire will take place on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. in the Duke Forest as “an opportunity for friends and family to share memories and stories,” according to the school’s website.
Dan described the time since his son’s death as “bittersweet.”
“There have been lots of tears, but it is wonderful to reflect on his life,” he said.
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