[posted by Gina]
I will never forget the day I met Luke. I was so nervous being at the freshman picnic at Lourdes and I wanted to meet new people so bad. Well I will never forget meeting this loud boy in a pink polo. He walked right up to me and I soon realized we were insanely similar. Loud, goofy, and ridiculous. He was my first new friend in high school. Through the next few weeks we continued to talk all the time, always laughing and always there for each other.
[posted by Kathie Plaskiewicz]
I didn’t know Luke well, but loved working with him on ‘On Golden Pond’ at the old Warner Studio Theatre many yrs ago, when he played the grandson! I did Props & Set Dress & one of the many things I had to run around backstage doing, during each performance, was to literally ‘wet’ Luke all over backstage. since he was supposed to have been caught in a rainstorm. I had a big spray bottle of water & would spray him all over. Once, we were getting a little too close to the cue for him to go out onstage, so he grabbed the bottle, opened it up & poured it all over himself lol. He always wanted to get totally into a role & do whatever he needed to do! Happy Birthday in heaven Luke!
[posted by Anna]
I didn’t know Luke very well, and I didn’t know Allison at all at the time, but Luke and I were in a horrible gen ed English class on Greek Mythology. It was a 300 person lecture class with essays every week and it was interminably boring. I was a freshman at CUA and I hated it. Luke and Anna Murray were upperclassmen at the time and I could tell from the first interaction how inseparable they were. I was pretty timid around them because of how self assured and confident they were, but they both went to great lengths to make me feel welcome and included me in their group study and mid-class conversations. One day, Luke started coming in with a duffel bag, and I didn’t ask why until one day when he went racing out of class with the bag and didn’t come back for a few minutes. When he walked back in, he said “false alarm!” to the relieved laughter of many in the class. I was surprised how many people he knew and how his energy seemed to be infectious to so many. After class he told me that he’d been walking around everywhere with this bag because his fiancé was pregnant and he needed to be ready to hop on a plane at any point. He had gotten a call and thought it was time but it turned out to be something else. I didn’t know him well, but I’ll never forget how happy and loving he looked when talking about Allison and how unbelievably excited he was for Lucy’s birth. There was never any doubt how much he loved them, so much so, that it was shining all over his face. It was a really beautiful moment.
[posted by Allison]
One of my earliest memories I have of him is from my freshman year at Catholic University. He was a sophomore and we had only met a few times before I came down with a bad case of strep throat and had to miss several of my classes in my first few weeks. Luke texted me and told me he was coming over to my dorm, and he skipped two of his own classes to be with me and take care of me. He brought me medicine and soup from the school store and just sat with me as we watched youtube videos of people singing. I made him show me videos of him in Les Mis and was so blown away by that beautiful voice. I remember looking at him, sitting there laughing with me and being with me as I was lying there, no make up, feverish, homesick, and thinking “wow what kind of guy would do this for someone he barely knew?” He left for a class and came back later while I was sleeping and left a salt shaker he stole from the cafeteria for me so that I could gargle and help heal my throat. He had snuck it into his pocket and later told me he had a puddle of salt left in there and he also got it all over our floor, but it was totally worth it. He left a note that said he’d be back after class. This memory reminds me of how generous he was, to complete strangers like he was to his closest friends and family. It reminds me of how he would stop at nothing to help someone in need, and how compassionate he was to anyone who was suffering or having a hard day.
About a week later he ended up getting strep throat too, probably from me since he was with me an entire day, and I took him to urgent care and sat with him in the waiting room. When his name was called they said “family only” could come back and the waiting room had a somewhat sketchy downtown DC urgent care vibe to it, so he told them I was his wife so they would let me come back with him! I couldn’t believe they didn’t even question it and that he didn’t just say “sister” or something but jumped right to wife. We joked about that two years later, that somehow he already knew that we would end up getting married when he blurted out that I was his wife. This strep throat incident ended up being the foundation of our friendship in college and gave me such a clear idea of how generous and wonderful this guy really was.
Enough said 🙂
[posted by Spencer]
As far as brothers go, Luke and I were pretty much inseparable, especially when we were little. Our days were filled with running amok doing silly (and at least a little stupid and dangerous) things in our backyard. There was this huge tree at the bottom of our driveway; it was the perfect climbing tree, the kind you could actually climb almost to the very top of. We would often hang out up there and make up stories about good guys and bad guys, cops and robbers, spies, etc. One time, however, we were having an epic lightsaber battle with our collapsible plastic lightsabers. I think I was a sith lord and he was a jedi and I was chasing him. He ran to the base of the tree, clipped his lightsaber to his belt (he had ample time to do this because he was so much faster than me), and started climbing tree. Refusing to be bested, I, of course, followed him up there. We got close enough to each other at the top of the tree, drew our sabers, and started going at it. Not only were we sword fighting IN THE TREE, but he was pretending to force push me and I was pretending to force choke him, all while perched on the high branches. Incredibly stupid? Yes. Amazingly fun? Also yes. Par for the course for our friendship growing up? Without a doubt.
[posted by Allison]
This picture is one of my favorite memories of Luke ever
We had just finished meeting with our priest for marriage prep and we’re going to walk to dinner before we needed to hear back to the church for choir practice. It was a beautiful, warm day outside and we decided midway through dinner we both wanted ice cream. I said we should just play it safe and order it off the menu so we weren’t late for choir practice. Luke knew I preferred ice cream in cones and he wanted an “exciting flavor” (lol) instead of plain, so he found a place we could walk to on his phone and we decided to risk it. We speed walk to this place because we were cutting it close and we get there and the place had closed like a month before. I started laughing and saying “told you so” (like the awesome fiancée I was) and he finds ANOTHER place on his phone. I started to argue that we will be so late and he grabs my hand and says “ITS HAPPENING” and we literally sprint there. While I order inside for us, Luke calls an UBER to drive us 4 blocks to rehearsal since we were going to be so late if we walked and we jump into this car with huge ice cream cones. We made it to rehearsal with one minute to spare and it took us a good half hour to finish our cones in between singing some sacred music. He had this big smile on his face the whole rehearsal and we kept laughing at how ridiculous that was the entire time. He never settled for anything, even something as small and silly as ice cream, and I loved that about him so much.
[posted by Luke’s Dad]
When we lived at Maplebrook School for three years when I taught there, Luke had just started high school. The students at Maplebrook were all around the same age as Luke. Both Luke and Spencer became acutely aware very quickly of how blessed they were, and how easy it would have been for their lives to have turned out like the lives of those Maplebrook students. It was a boarding school for severely learning disabled students. They were far from home, far from their families, and often felt very alone. We lived in the boys dorm, and Luke and Spencer both would help the teenage boys with doing some of the things that we all take for granted. They would help them with homework, help them tie their shoes, and teach them how to tie a perfect Windsor Knot in their necktie. There was a sports program there, but there were very few schools to play against and games often went overlooked. One winter, Luke started to notice that basketball games were getting cancelled because they could not find referees to ref the games. The school didn’t pay very much, and refereeing a basketball game for a bunch of learning disabled, Asperger, anger-issue laden kids was not something that evidently appealed to certified referees in the area. So Luke took it upon himself to go to the administration and tell them that he would referee their games. Luke felt that these kids deserved better than that. He also knew that he could supplement his income by refereeing all the home games. They told him that he was not allowed to because he wasn’t certified. So Luke found an online course, taught himself, passed the certification test, bought all the uniforms and gear he needed with his own money, and became a basketball referee. I didn’t even know about his plan until he had passed the test. He did it completely independently. To me, that always had said so much about Luke. He saw a need, and he filled it. He saw an opportunity, and he took it. And there were no more cancelled basketball games at Maplebrook that year (2010).
