By Susan Shinn

For The Salisbury Post

Nearly 17 years after his partner Matt Shepard was murdered, Lewis is still so very sad.

Matt was killed in Wyoming in 1998, in a death that shocked the nation because of its brutality. Yet Lewis remembers Matt as a sweet and sensitive young man during the 1995-96 school year they spent together at Catawba College.

The documentary, “Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine,” will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 23, at Lee Street Theater. Tickets are $5. Robert and Tara Van Geons are sponsoring the event. Robert and Lewis were suitemates at Catawba, and Robert and Matt were friends as well.

Although Lewis is grateful to the couple for their efforts, he will not see the film. Neither will Dr. Janice Fuller, a longtime friend who taught Matt at Catawba. Janice and Lewis met Thursday evening in her office to share memories of Matt. Lewis grew up in Salisbury and still lives in North Carolina.

“I can’t go see the film,” Janice said. “It will hurt too much.”

Matt arrived at Catawba in the fall of 1995. He had attended high school in Switzerland, and his adviser was a Catawba grad. Matt and Lewis met at the Blue Masque initiation, during a “very cheesy” hazing ceremony.

“I was a senior and I was helping blindfold the incoming freshman,” Lewis remembered, “and Matt told me, ‘I really have to go to the bathroom.’ So I walked him to the bathroom and we just started talking. He had just come back to the United States and we had both grown up in Europe. We just started talking and talking.”

The two became friends and then started a relationship that lasted until Matt’s death, Lewis said. That school year, Lewis performed in “Green Shutters,” directed by Dr. Dana Anderson, a Catawba theater professor who is retiring this year. He turned 21 during rehearsals, and was hoping to go out that night to celebrate — but the rehearsal ran late.

“I walked back to my dorm and Matt’s standing there with one little balloon, waiting for me,” Lewis said. “He said, ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours.’ That was the beginning. Who would do that for anyone, seriously?”

Lewis and Matt stayed together those next three years, even though they were living and working in different cities. They had their last conversation a few days before Matt’s death. They were planning to move to Denver together, Lewis said.

Janice called Lewis as soon as she heard the news about Matt. He did not know because he was working odd hours at a Charlotte hotel. Lewis came to her house and they stayed up all night.

When Lewis went to Matt’s funeral, he was shocked at the crowds who were there, including protesters.

“You can’t even grieve at a funeral like that,” he said. “You have to guard yourself.”

His grief, he said, is nothing he really wants to share. “I’ve grieved for the last 16 years, every single day.”

Janice wrote a poem about Matt’s death, called “Relics of the Martyr.” It’s part of her newest book of poems, “On the Bevel.” Lewis, who graduated from Catawba with a self-designed major that included theater, English, German and dance, has written and painted over the years, all of his work influenced by the events surrounding Matt’s death.

Janice remembers Matt as a quiet student, small and delicate.

“He’d come to talk to me,” she said. “He wrote a lot of personal things in his journal. Considering how things turned out for Matt, Catawba was a safe place for him.”

As for Lewis, he credits his Catawba theater work for helping him cope with such a devastating loss.

“You learn how to be a different character,” he says. “The show must go on.”

For more information about the documentary, “Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine,” visit www.leestreet.org or call the theater at 704-310-5507.

Freelance writer Susan Shinn lives in Salisbury.