“In every photograph of Denny that you see, he just comes alive out of the photograph,” Burgin said.
Lewis also volunteered his time in a number of campus programs. He served as a peer counselor and date rape counselor, and led a group of first-years on hiking trips through the Freshman Outdoor Program.
Friends point toward his enrollment in the Harvard Bartending Course offered through Harvard Student Agencies as an example of his fun-loving personality.
While Lewis enjoyed a good time with friends, he also loved a challenge, friends said.
“He had a playful side and he also had an adventurous side,” Muzinich said.
After graduating from Harvard last spring, Lewis went on a backpacking trip through Morocco.
“He wanted to see the world,” Muzinich said.
His adventurous side also brought him to South America for a hiking trip in Patagonia this month. But as he, Owen I. Breck ’01 and Robert A. D. Pike ’01 drove along a gravel mountain road near the town of Puerto Madryn, Argentina on Wednesday morning, their car flipped over, killing Lewis.
According to friends, Lewis was in the process of applying to postbaccalaureate pre-med programs, and was eager about becoming a doctor.
Before he came to Harvard in the fall of 1997, Lewis attended the Groton School, a prestigious boarding school in Groton, Mass., where he became a popular campus leader. He served as the senior prefect of his class, an office analogous to class president, and volunteered as a youth soccer coach. An avid singer, Lewis was also active in the school’s choir.
The website of the Groton School now bears a funeral announcement for its ‘97 graduate.
“Denny and his family are in our prayers,” the website says.
Friends say Lewis was a great listener and conversationalist—a person with whom people could easily talk.
“When you would pass him in the street, you would end up talking to him for such a long time,” said Goldstein, who attended both boarding school and college with Lewis. “He would be genuinely interested in what you were saying.”
Even in his death, Lewis will continue to be an example to those who admired him while he was alive, Burgin said.
“Sometimes, when you’re remembering someone who is gone, there’s a tendency to shut out the bad moments, or the times when things weren’t quite right,” he said. ”When I think about Denny, though, there aren’t any moments like that—there’s nothing I have to exclude. He was always kind, always thoughtful, always fun to be around. I learned a lot from his example, and will continue to learn from my memories of him as time passes.”