The Short Life and Sudden Death of Germain Vigeant

The night after Germain’s death, several of her friends, holding forty-ounce bottles of Colt.45 and Mickey’s, walked to the Bunge silos. They stood together and toasted Germain, who had often laughed about the absurd size of those bottles. Then they poured out the beer and arranged the bottles in a heart shape to honor their fallen friend.

The Bunge elevator, says Germain’s mother, was almost a fated place for her daughter’s death. Whatever compelled Germain to climb the tower was more her nature than any outside influence. In Germain’s old room—now painted bright yellow, where Laurel stores stacks of cards, letters, clippings, and scrapbooks from the funeral—she can still envision the graffiti that once decorated the walls. “It was all over,” Laurel says. “When I saw the grain elevator, it was like it had her name on it.”

In the weeks following Germain’s death—and maybe, in some instances, because of it—people climbed the towers until Bunge hired a round-the-clock security watch. Someone spray-painted Germain’s name in large red letters at the bottom of one of the silos. In June, Bunge sold the property to the nonprofit housing organization Project for Pride in Living, which announced plans to tear down the silos in the fall and build mixed-income homes on the site. PPL immediately had nearly all the graffiti whitewashed and bolted huge metal plates over the entrances.

Buzz Vigeant says he has been visiting the site at least three times a week, standing next to the silo where Germain fell and talking softly to his daughter.  He says he’s thought about filing a negligence lawsuit against Bunge, but believes his chances in court would be slim. He says he’s both relieved and discomfited by the thought of the towers’ demolition. In early June, he scooped up pebbles from near the silo and says the stones are “infused with the spirit of Hooter.”

Damon Vaughan, who walks past the towers every day, just wants the structures torn down. He was charged with trespassing in the case, but the city agreed to a year’s continuance, with a pending dismissal. Shortly after the accident, he dropped his classes. With plans to resume school in the fall, he spends his days delivering food for University Dining Services and, when he can, rock climbing. He replays that January night in his head and still thinks about how things might have been different if he’d taken a flashlight—which, he says, was their biggest mistake. “I’ll think about it for the rest of my life,” he says of the accident. “And I’ll go over all the different parts of it. People always tell me, ‘It’ll get better,’ or, ‘You’ll get over it.’ It’s not something you get over. You just take it and use it and learn to live with it.”

Two months after Germain’s death, Damon found his way to Laurel’s house, where he’s spent hours on two occasions talking about Germain. For Laurel, the conversations have offered a chance to keep her daughter’s memory alive. For Damon, the talks have helped him to better know the girl who slipped from his grip. And Laurel, as she has for other troubled kids Germain brought to her door, has given him comforting words. On his first visit, a formal session overseen by a police counselor and attended by the Vigeant family, Laurel said, “Damon, for some reason, it was Germain’s time. At least she died holding the hand of a person she liked. I hope when I die I’m holding the hand of a person I like.”

When Damon left that evening, Laurel was surrounded by remnants of her daughter’s life and death: her school ID, her favorite black tennis shoes placed next to a U of M sign, the purse she was carrying when she fell. When Laurel looks forward, she dreams of continuing a scholarship fund that her son’s friends started in Germain’s name to help East Side kids. When she looks back, she feels both the joy and sorrow of a mother who had just begun to see the promise of her wild child unfold almost like wings.

“I got to see her go in the right direction,” she says, alluding, with pride, to her daughter’s college years. “I got to see her really change. I got to see that little seed growing.”

Gayle Golden is a freelance journalist and teaches at the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.