The AU flag flew at half-staff on Aug. 30 for the memorial service of Kevin Sutherland, a recent AU graduate who was stabbed to death on a Metro train last month.
The memorial service for Sutherland was held in the Kay Spiritual Center at 3 p.m., and the chapel was filled with his relatives, close friends and members of the AU community.
Adriana Ganci, a 2015 AU alum and close friend of Sutherland, described him as a selfless individual who dedicated himself to fixing problems he saw in D.C. and in life.
“He loved D.C. more than anybody I knew and that was with knowing all of its faults,” Ganci said. “But he took those faults and took every one of them as an opportunity to be better and to do better and to help others do better and that is just a very rare thing to find in a person.”
In his memorial speech, Sutherland’s father, Douglas Sutherland, described his son as an extremely talented individual. Douglas Sutherland said Kevin was his home’s “tech geek” who could repair any technical device. He also said Kevin could design and craft intricate images for projects and friends’ Student Government campaigns.
On the altar next to a bouquet of roses was a Yankees baseball cap, commemorating Sutherland’s devotion to the team, and a picture of Sutherland with a wide grin in front of the White House garden where he had been a volunteer.
“His dedication to helping others is what I will miss most of all,” his father said during the memorial.
Sutherland was an avid, talented photographer who took hundreds of images of friends and the District, Douglas Sutherland said. He also described his son as a sponge for politics who absorbed the political world through internships, volunteering with the White House and through service to marginalized communities.
Abigail Finn, a 2014 graduate of the School of Public Affairs and Tya Scott, a 2014 School of Communication graduate, spoke about the family they had become with Sutherland. Both were roommates and friends of his, and they described him as a loyal sibling who always found ways to motivate them to adventure around D.C. as well as attend baseball games, concerts and many other events.
“He invested his love and life,” Scott said. “His work was not finished and neither is ours.”
In memory of Sutherland, two funds were established at AU by family and friends, The Eagle previously reported. The Kevin Joseph Sutherland Memorial Fund is a scholarship fund to continue his student legacy at AU. The second, called the Kevin Sutherland Internship Fund, supports students taking unpaid internships on Capitol Hill.
