By Carolyn Reid
According to Kelly Meadors, her brother Nick Carr enjoyed being on the water. He loved water--and adventure--so much that he bought a boat earlier this year.
That boat started drifting away from its mooring Saturday night, August 6, and Carr hopped back onto the dock to pull it back so he could fully untie it.
Instead, it pulled him in to the water. His wife Tara tried to save him, but family members, including Meadors, found his body just a little way downstream last Monday afternoon.
Meadors fulfilled her promise to bring him home that day--a promise she made as she walked out of the house that morning. That was the least she could do for him.
“We were besties,” she recalls. “We would tell each other our secrets--and yeah. We would use them as blackmail later.” She snickers at the memory.
Many of those secrets were never told, even to the point their parents did not know they shared secrets like that till the day of Carr’s funeral.
Meadors knew from a young age because of that just how fiercely her brother loved family.
She says he was born on November 11, 1983, and his parents still live in the house near Mt. Auburn where he spent his early years. While his dad just celebrated 50 years at Siemen’s Manufacturing and his grandfather worked their before his father, the youngest Carr went into auto sales. For the past 10 years, he worked with Jeff Wyler Kia in Fairfiled as sales manager.
That went right along with some of his loves, according to his sister. “He loved fast bikes, fast cars...
Josh Plummer, a life-long friend, remembers those fast cars and bikes--especially the bikes.
“He would scare me,” he remembers. “He knew no fear with motorcycles. He would come up my dad’s long driveway on his bike and practice to no end doing wheelies and endos.
“He was a daredevil, always faster than the rest.”
He also liked being center of attention.
He was hilarious enough to be a stand-up comedian, Meadors says.
Plummer agrees.
“He was the class clown. He made sure he was the center of attention. And he used it if a friend got in trouble. If someone got in trouble with class, he would act out to divert attention from his friend. He tried to help him out that way.”
As an adult, he would do what he could to make things awkward for his friends, too, just because it was fun.
Both Plummer and Carr worked at Kerry in Alexandria, and Plummer said he was sharp, witty, and those traits helped propel him into management. “He could give a rebuttal faster than anyone I have ever seen, but he wasn’t deceptive.”
And he wanted to do things differently to help his customers. He went to Wyler Kia with the same mindset, and Plummer says “he moved the needle big-time” in sales for the company.
Meadors remembers his competitive side, an asset that undoubtedly helped him in his career.
Both she and Plummer recall his love for sports.
“When he was a kid, he played ball, rode dirt bikes, lots of things
But those were just a few of his interests that grew with him.
Carr was into baseball (“He loved the Reds), football (Cowboys), golfing, many sports.
And, of course, Kentucky basketball. “He and Dad bled blue.”
“He smoked the best cigars, and he was a grill master; really, he was good at anything he did. He was so competitive.”
“He was rounded in everything,” Plummer says. “He knew something about just about everything and could talk about it.”
He also loved dogs (he had four, Meadors says), but his pride and joy, when you came down to it, she said, was his lawn.
“We had a picture of his house next to his casket, and people asked about it. We told them to look at the lawn. He made sure the mower left crisp lines. He ran that John Deere mower until those lines were just right. He was ecstatic with his yard.”
That is something Plummer says he got from his dad Stan Carr. The older Carr would tell him exactly how he wanted the yard, and if it was not right, he had to do it again.
“But people were his thing.
“He never met a stranger,” Meadors acknowledges. He had an energy and charisma that people could not resist, and when he talked people listened.
All he wanted was cars, life, and family.
When his daughter was born 17 years ago, he was thrilled because she would be a daddy’s girl. When his son came along nine years later, they would play ball together.
“And Peyton was his, too. There was never a distinction,” Meadors confirms.
He wanted to raise his family with a fierce love, and he did, she says.
For Meadors, of course the loss is fresh. “I’m mad at God. It comes in waves. Sometimes, I am OK, then it hits.
“We are so grateful for the outpouring of love and support from the village that raised us.”
She is grateful, too, knowing that the sea of blue that demonstrated the support of so many would have pleased him quite well.
“It was the perfect funeral for him.”
She knows the pain fades as time passes, but she does not want to feel differently. She lost her only sibling, her friend as long as she can remember.
“We will all miss his laugh, his humor, his kindness, and his fierce love. He loved his family and friends fiercely, and they loved him fiercely in return.
“We won’t ever forget him.”
