The date on the gravesite headstone shows that David Ellis died a year ago this week, when a fire swept through his Knox Box apartment basement and smothered his last breaths.
But to Ellis’ friends and family, the inscription below his death date tells the real story of his life.
“You were young and you will be missed, but the sound of your laugh, the strength of your love and the power of your dedication will forever overwhelm that petty fire.”
Ellis, a 22-year-old African-American and American studies major who cultivated a web following from his insights on hip-hop music and transformed the campus airwaves with his passionate knowledge for music on WMUC radio, left behind a legacy of friends who describe him with more than the typical reverent praises often used to describe a lost loved one.
“Everyone he’s friends with thinks he’s their best friend,“ said former university student Greg Santiago, Ellis’ friend and co-host of WMUC’s Friday night show. “If you had something serious to talk about, he would listen. If you just wanted to joke around, same thing. Anything you would want from a friend he was there for.
“He was just a good person, he would never talk bad about anybody,” added Santiago, 28, who graduated in 2002. “He made the little ice cream at the [North campus] diner. People would say ‘Oh that’s the ice cream guy,’ and in the minute or two it took them to get the ice cream, they knew he was a cool guy.”
Santiago planned to join about a dozen of Ellis’ friends at Plato’s diner last night to continue the group’s tradition of visiting the restaurant after their Friday shows. Others, like Ellis’ mother Rochelle, visited his grave in his hometown of Princeton Junction, NJ, which was covered with flowers left to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his death.
While his friends and family gush about Ellis’ passion for music, his endeavors went far beyond hip-hop. Friends describe him as a talented artist, pointing to his award as his high’s school’s best artist. In fifth grade, Rochelle Ellis said, he drew a comic strip called Teenaged Mutant Ninja Cocktail Weenies.
In 1996, he started a website to speak his mind, and even though the site was dedicated to his thoughts on hip-hop, it reflected his ability to connect with almost anyone, friends said.
“To the people who knew him for his writing, he was real influential. He was just real big in the underground,” said longtime friend Rahul Reddy, who said Ellis was blogging before it was called blogging. “He just knew a lot of shit about music. He could’ve had a huge impact…he just didn’t have the opportunity.”
Ellis’ website, SumIsh.com — named after the Common song “Some Shit I Wrote” — gathered a respectable following on the Internet because of what Reddy described as Ellis’ great understanding of hip-hop and his conversational, often comical, style of writing.
Reddy now operates the site, which was formally known as Hip-Hop-Reviewz and plans to re-post Ellis’ writings after they came down when the site switched servers.
“I actually read the website, but I didn’t even know it was him,” said Santiago, who said he was a fan before he noticed Ellis looking at it one day at work. “I was like, ‘Oh, you read that too?’ He was like ‘nah, this is my website’.”
The fire that killed Ellis destroyed his computer, which contained much of his work, and burned a portion of his LP collection, which some say was comprised of nearly 2000 records. Fire investigators said the fire started from a toaster oven in the kitchen.
Ellis’ death came just nine months after another senior, Michael Scrocca died of smoke inhalation when his Princeton Avenue house caught fire. Though the fire at Scrocca’s was set intentionally, the two deaths touched off a wave of concern in the city over the safety of off-campus houses.
They raised the urgency in the College Park City Council to clear a backlog of appeals that resulted from a strong crackdown on fire code violations in the city. The council passed emergency legislation which allowed them to expedite the appeals process and clear the backlog, said Director of Public Services Bob Ryan.
Many of the appeals challenged an ordinance that requires basement apartments have at least two exits. Janet Firth, the owner of Ellis’ Knox Box, was the first property owner to begin a sweeping reform of basement renovations when she began installing large windows in her properties after the fire. “Nothing ever moves government until something tragic happens,” Rochelle Ellis said. “I can’t give the city a bunch of praise because they should have been doing their job long before.”
Rochelle declined to comment on any legal action she might take, describing the city’s actions as “too little, too late.”
Although, according to Rochelle, Ellis’ father has set up a scholarship fund for American Studies majors in his son’s memory, friends said it will be neither the scholarship nor his inadvertent impact on city politics for which Ellis will be remembered. His words and his music, his love for friends, family and all things hip-hop — that was David Ellis.
Contact reporter Owen Praskievicz at praskieviczdbk@gmail.com
