In the fall of 1998, George Cantor and his wife sent off their bright,
funny, enthusiastic, 18-year-old daughter, Courtney, to the University
of Michigan as a freshman. Six weeks later, the university called Cantor
to claim her corpse. Courtney fell from her sixth-floor dormitory window
after being served drinks illegally at a fraternity party. The events
surrounding her death were featured on the CBS news magazine 48 Hours.
In Cantor's grief over losing Courtney, he sank into a bitter and
prolonged depression that led him to question the value of his own life
and newspaper career. This ended after a year when he was diagnosed with
cancer, at which point the value of life suddenly and stunningly was
renewed. Emotional and reportorial, a mix of grief therapy, celebration
of life, mystery, and social criticism, Courtney's Legacy addresses the
reality of death, but views the issue from the other end of the life
cycle. How do parents and friends deal with the loss of a young woman
whose life was so full of promise? Courtney's Legacy also serves as an
alarm for parents, being a tough examination of how university housing,
legal, and social policies helped to create a situation that made
Courtney's death a tragedy waiting to happen. Cantor eloquently unfolds
his and Courtney's story, one of death, loss, and renewal, revealing
that learning that acceptance of the past and celebration of the present
is the only way to endure in our increasingly complex world.
