Today, we have learned that we lost a member of our Students For Liberty family, Keenan Wegener, an Alaskan, an SFLer, and our friend. He was brutally taken from us last week. Keenan was the friendliest person you’d ever have known. I don’t truly know what the last couple of years were like for him, but he deserved a long full life, and I’m heartbroken for his family and friends.
He was there with us at our regional conferences, top leadership retreats, ISFLCs, and LibertyCons. We remember when he first came to ISFLC in Washington D.C., totally new to SFL, and a group of us were preparing to go outside monument hopping. We saw him there and, being the very outgoing guy we’d soon come to know, he approached us and started a friendly chat asking about how he could become a part of Students For Liberty. We were excited to have an eager recruit. He joined a few months later in the summer of 2016.
I remember being stuck at an airport after a retreat, joking around and hanging out with him and some Floridians while we all prepared to head home. It was his last retreat with SFL because he was graduating in 2018. But I always figured I’d see him and some of the other Alaskans someday, though I had my doubts about his insistence that Kenai was the best part of Alaska. Keenan was a big personality that we will forever miss.
While in SFL, Keenan’s kindness was reflected in his actions. He was always interested in demonstrating the power of voluntarism by taking care of our local communities. Thanks to his enthusiasm and efforts, SFL would go on to organize a Day of Service, in which 10 cities throughout North America would provide food and clothing for hundreds of homeless people. Attached is a picture of him proudly representing SFL while handing out bags of food to the homeless in Anchorage.
Keenan Wegener was a good man. We and many of our older SFLers who were lucky enough to have known him will miss him dearly. This is truly unfair and way too sudden. Stay close and love each other while you are able. Time goes by too quickly.
Rest in peace KW (1994-2022)
