by Aly Beery
The ’01-’02 student staff had a fool-proof plan as they approached the large bulldozer. In keeping with tradition, each hall staff was collecting pictures for the student staff photo scavenger hunt.
The group was determined to pose at the top of the giant machine, a feat that athletic, muscular guys like Dave Whitcomb ’03, Greg Weiss ’03 and Matt Dank ’03 approached confidently. The group rushed to the awkward contraption and scrambled up.
“Before we knew it, Lenko [Stefanov ’04] was already at the top,” said Umair Javed ’04 of his friend and fellow student staff member. No one had noticed tall, gangly Stefanov climbing ahead of everyone else. “We looked up and there he was, just sitting there... He had beaten a couple of really big guys. So Dave gets up and says, ‘Way to go Lenko! He’s a frikkin’ Lenko monkey!’”
Stefanov didn’t say anything; he simply grinned.
Laughter and personality
Since last Monday, May 5, when Stefanov was discovered to have committed suicide, many of his friends, professors and fellow student staff members have held Stefanov’s smile and his contagious laugh tightly in their minds. “His sense of humor was so succinct—he was more passive, not very animated,” said Javed. “If he laughed you would just laugh because he was laughing. He was just so much fun to be around.”
The calm, collected nature that Stefanov combined with intelligence and an understated sense of humor causes many of his close friends to puzzle over the circumstances of his death. “He seemed to have his life straightened out,” said Javed. “This guy had everything made for him because he worked so hard at everything he did. I thought, ‘Here’s a guy who can take anything.’” Javed has been studying at the London School of Economics since last August, but was in close contact with Stefanov through phone calls and email.
“We just had the greatest times together,” said Javed. “I think it shows how limited humans are in terms of what we can do—we plan, and we think we’re going to do this and that—but there are so many forces that are beyond our control.” Like many others, Javed had no idea that Stefanov was struggling so much. Just a week before he died, Stefanov got in touch with Javed to tell him about room draw.
“He drew rooms next to each other in Younker for us,” said Javed. “He was so excited about that; he talked about going to work out, going to parties—just having a great senior year... It’s going to be so different without him.”
Javed loved going to Harris parties with Stefanov because of the way he danced. “He had this funny dance that he’d do. He would just bop from side to side; he looked so happy. He was such a terrible dancer... Every five minutes he would push his glasses up; it was his trademark move.”
“He had the kind of smile that warmed your day,” said Amanda Prouty ’03. “It broke the serious look he had, the stoicism that he seemed to have.” Stefanov served in the military in Bulgaria before he came to Grinnell, but he didn’t talk about it much. His posture was perfect, which Prouty says drove her crazy. His face was serious—except when he laughed, which was often.
One of the first things Yasir Mehboob ’03 remembers about Stefanov was his laugh. “Not everyone just comes and laughs like that,” he said. Stefanov’s laugh was quirky, loud and a bit unruly, but also contagious. “I used to hate it... I used to think, ‘What’s wrong with this guy?’” Mehboob said. Once he got to know Stefanov, however, he came to appreciate the animated laugh, realizing that Stefanov’s way of showing his friendship was to laugh with his friends. “You’d tell him the stupidest thing and he’d just laugh; sometimes you weren’t even trying to say something funny,” said Mehboob. “It takes a lot of effort to laugh like that, a lot of energy.”
Stefanov certainly had a serious side; he was academically driven and very career oriented, and he cared a lot about his position as an SA and about the well-being of his friends. “I felt like he always made time for things that were important to him,” said Anik Gevers ’05, an SA in Smith.“It was sort of uncanny—he seemed to have it all in balance... There was definitely so much more to him than [academics] that was so subtle and powerful…He was so good at taking stuff seriously while having fun with it.”
Stefanov was an SA for two years, his sophomore year on Dibble Second and this year on Younker Second North. “I watched him at group process [for student staff selection],” said Prouty. “I knew he would be a great SA... He had an automatic connection with his floor.”
Members of the Smith/Younker student staff, led by Residence Life Coordinator Timothy Bosler, talk about Stefanov as one who seemed to bring balance to the sometimes chaotic, playful staff meetings.
“We have a tendency to get off topic,” said Gevers. “Lenko was always so much in the center of the team…but not necessarily the center of attention…He had this presence, but it wasn’t like, ‘I need the spotlight on me.’…He didn’t feel like he always needed to talk. But when he did, you could tell that he had really thought about it.”
Character and dignity
“Lenko and I had a common friend, Umair,” said Javed Murad ’03. “His freshman year in Cowles, Lenko and I were sitting with some other people... I passed a comment about Umair’s girlfriend, and Lenko got up and got very angry with me. He said, ‘You shouldn’t talk about him behind his back, you know?’ We worked it out quickly, but that incident made me realize that he took his friendships very seriously... He was really sincere about everything he did.”
Murad told Javed about the incident in Cowles, because, as Javed said, “Lenko wouldn’t come up to me and tell me that he did that himself... It really meant a lot to me.”
In addition to his friends, Stefanov cared a lot for his family in Bulgaria: his mother Aneligia, his father Stefan and his 15-year-old brother. “He was very close to his family,” said Javed. “He was very concered about his brother’s academic future. He made sure that he was learning English. Lenko had taught himself English in eighth grade or something.”
“We reminisced a lot,” said Prouty. “He missed the smell of his home, his mom coming in to wake him up, playing with his little brother.”
Javed remembers a photograph of Stefanov with his brother on the wall in Stefanov’s room. “You could tell from his body language that he was so caring,” said Javed. “He sort of had him in a headlock.”
Murad and Stefanov shared a shift at the AV Center. Although they frequently talked about their courses and their internships and jobs in Manhattan and Boston, Murad also remembers Stefanov talking about his life in Bulgaria.
“He spoke about how he wanted to help his family,” said Murad. “It’s so expensive to come to the U.S. to study. He spoke about how he wanted to make it big and then give back to his family.”
Stefanov’s father has been without work for several years and now has a difficult time finding it because of his age; the family doesn’t have a very large income. Lenko was planning to save money this summer to help his family buy a car. After his death a memorial fund was set up through the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George in Des Moines. All donations to the fund will be sent to Stefanov’s family in Bulgaria; because helping his family was so important to Stefanov, some of his dearest friends feel that supporting his family now is perhaps the best way to honor Stefanov’s memory.
Dedication and drive
As a first year at International Student Orientation, Javed heard about Stefanov; he knew that he was from Bulgaria, that he was incredibly bright and that he planned to major in economics. “One of my friends from Zambia said ‘This guy is in my tutorial, Lenko; he’s just so smart!” said Javed. “We thought, ‘He’s going to be our competitor,’ yet he and I grew to be the best of friends and just supported each other.”
“We took micro economics with [Mark] Montgomery together,” said Javed. “It was rather challenging. No one did very well on the first exam. For our second exam, Lenko and I said, ‘We’re going to show this guy that we’re not that easy.’ Montgomery handed the tests back and I looked at Lenko’s. He got 100 out of 100. I got a 98. He just got my head and rubbed my hair.”
This year, Stefanov interviewed for an incredibly competitive internship with Credit Suisse in New York; it was Stefanov’s dream internship. “He gave me this whole description about the interview,” said Murad. “He told me before he left, ‘I am going to get it.’ He was so determined.” Murad said that Stefanov spent five hundred dollars preparing for the interview; he bought a new suit and would try it on to make sure that he looked just right.
“We had a common interest in shoes,” said Murad. “He wore really nice shoes. He knew I had a shoe fetish and so we would always talk about them.”
The suit or the shoes must have helped; when Stefanov got back to Grinnell, there was a message from Credit Suisse on his voice mail that offered him the internship. He stood in his doorway telling everyone on his floor about it as they passed his room.
Javed also landed an internship in New York; he and Stefanov planned to spend time together and possibly find housing together. “It was a joint success for us [to get impressive internships],” said Javed. “We conquered it together. The markets are doing so badly right now, so to get something like this was great.” Now that Stefanov won’t be there, Javed is considering taking an internship in London instead of New York for the summer.
Interests and passions
“Over spring break, we got to work together,” said Mehboob. “For the first two days we went around campus imaging and cleaning computers, then we spent the rest of the break in a room together for eight hours a day doing data entry.” Mehboob was a member of a band in his home in Bangladesh that put out two CDs.
“On Tuesday of the first week, he asked me to get my CD. I gave him my two albums; it’s traditional [Bangladeshi] music … I wasn’t sure he would like it. I told him that he didn’t have to listen to it, but he really wanted to. I thought maybe he was just being nice.
“The next day I came in and he had gotten there early,” said Mehboob. “Lenko was listening to one of my CDs…He started singing along with a couple of phrases that he caught on to … It totally blew me away.”
Over spring break Mehboob also introduced Stefanov to SmashHitsUSA.com, which Stefanov loved because he could listen to music from the ‘70s and ‘80s, Mehboob’s favorite era. “We sang along with the music,” said Mehboob. “He was a big fan of Dire Straits, The Scorpions, other rock bands from the ‘80s … From time to time he would put in my CD.”
Mehboob doesn’t know whether Stefanov truly loved his CD or if Stefanov was just trying to relate to him, but Mehboob believes that it was in Stefanov’s character to try to make others feel at ease. “His intentions were always so good,” said Mehboob. “He would never straight out oppose you … He would always say something to make you feel okay.”
As one of Stefanov’s closest friends, Javed witnessed how benevolent Stefanov was with others. “We would talk about relationships with each other,” said Javed. “He came across as so compassionate, so sensitive in that matter. If you didn’t know him, Lenko might come across as someone who is cold because he is fairly calm and reserved, but he’s really very emotional.”
Several of Stefanov’s friends noted that he had a difficult time asking for things, even from those he trusted. “Lenko wouldn’t just ask for help,” said Mehboob. “He had such a nice way of saying things; if he would ask for something, you couldn’t say no. He would always go around it though, beat around the bush … I think it’s one of the really positive things about Lenko—but it’s also really sad.”
Memorial contributions may be directed to:
Greek Orthodox Church of St. George
1110 35th Street, DesMoines, Iowa 50311
Checks should be made payable to Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, noting “Lenko Stefanov Family Fund”.
Cards and letters to the family can be sent to the following address:
Stefan Stafanov, Anelijia Stefanova
No. 22, Svoboda Street, Apt. 113 ,
Varna 9009, Bulgaria
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