'A ray of sunshine': UNC student Madison DeVries passes away at 20

April 16, 2020

Madison DeVries

Madison DeVries, a UNC junior whose many passions included being on the jump rope team, playing lacrosse and being an admissions ambassador, passed away on Friday, April 10, at age 20.

DeVries, originally from Baltimore, Maryland, attended Topsail High School in Hampstead, North Carolina. She is survived by her father, John DeVries, her mother, Georgiana DeVries, and her sister, Sophie DeVries, a first-year student at Topsail High School.

DeVries was her high school’s valedictorian and prom queen, and a Covenant Scholar at UNC. She studied health policy and management at the University’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she was an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Epidemiology. She also interned at Eisenhower Medical Center in California and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Georgia.

DeVries co-founded the “Jump Ahead” program, where she and other public health students on her jump rope team taught children about jump rope and health education.

Her father said, however, that she never wore her many accomplishments on her sleeve: “She was the most humble young lady you’d ever meet.”

DeVries’ boyfriend, Isaac Rosso Klakovich, is a UNC junior. He said she never took herself too seriously and had a good understanding of what mattered in life.

“At the end of the day, she always knew that people were the most important,” Klakovich said. “She made time for people, and she just had her priorities right in a way that I have so much respect for.”

He said some of his best memories with DeVries are getting wings, visiting her in Atlanta during her internship and going to the beach — but that being with her even made a trip to the grocery store as fun as anything else.

“It’s so hard to put into words the effect someone has on you when it was really nothing but just pure happiness,” he said. “She showed me happiness that was just carefree and alive.”

Close friend Ana Gabriela Dimate said having fun and enjoying life were always DeVries’ priorities, and that there was nothing she put her mind to that she couldn’t do.

“She was just a ray of sunshine and nobody could stop or rain on her parade,” she said.

DeVries’ friends and parents said she genuinely cared about the people around her and always wanted to hear what they had to say.

Her parents remember a story from when she was in first grade, when they got a call from the principal saying she was sitting alone at the lunch table. When the principal asked why she was sitting alone, she said she had two sets of friends who she loved and didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by choosing.

“And the principal said that was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen, and that it was the most adult thing,” DeVries’  father said. “We think about that and it was just — wow, that was Maddie.”

Her dad also said she was always the first person to reach out to a friend who needed help. If someone fell down on the lacrosse field, she was the first person to offer them a hand. She was a natural leader who built people up and motivated them, he said — and an incredible big sister.

“I have and always will continue to look up to Maddie,” her sister, Sophie, shared. “She always knew how to make me happy. One of Maddie’s favorite quotes was, ‘The light in me honors the light in you.’ Maddie will continue to inspire me and many others. Her spirit will always live on.”

“Maddie was the kindest, most gentle, warmhearted daughter a mom could ever ask for,” her mother added. “Her sister has those same qualities. God blessed me with both of them.”

DeVries loved attending UNC, which her father called her dream school. He said that in her role as an admissions ambassador, new applicants could tell how passionate she was about the school — just like everyone could always tell how passionate she was about life.

“There were so many things about her that people connected to,” he said. “She was just that person.”

This story originally was published by The Daily Tar Heel.

In lieu of flowers, a GoFundMe fundraiser has been created for a memorial fund.

Contact the UNC Gillings Team of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.