By CAROL J. CASTANEDA

Of the Statesman-Journal

 

Sean Sadowski will never perform in McNary High School’s new theater, but audiences will remember him for years to come.

 

McNary’s theater director, Ken Collins, had a gold-plated plaque, etched with a star, placed on the center stage of the theater in Sadowski’s memory.

 

“He’ll always be a star in this theater,” Collins said.

 

Collins, Sean’s teacher and friend, had read the eulogy at Sean’s funeral. They had worked together all last year, building production sets for the old theater and dreaming about the new one.

 

Sean worked with the lights and was an actor.

 

“During the construction phase, we would sneak through construction fences,” Collins said. “We’d just walk around and snoop and imagine what it was going to be like.”

 

Sean never got a chance to see the completed theater. He died June 17 when a pickup truck driven by his friend, Tim Cobos, plunged over an embankment near Dallas.

 

Tim is taking theater this year as a result of Sean’s interest in the musical “Grease.”

 

“He was my locker partner last year,” Tim said. “We did a lot of things together. It’s hard to accept he’s gone.”

 

Sean would have been a junior this fall and most probably would have been involved in this year’s musical, “Oklahoma!”

 

The opening night performance – Nov. 14 – will be dedicated to Sean.

 

“They were laying the stage when he was killed,” Collins said. “It was like losing one of my own kids.”

 

Collins had a time capsule placed beneath the plaque for Sean.

 

“Because he’ll never get to use the theater, the time capsule and memorial plaque were a way of assuring he’d always be here,” Collins said. “It starts the theater out with sense of heritage.”

 

Inside the capsule are a copy of the eulogy, a photograph of Sean as a character in “Grease,” a copy of newspaper articles about his death, a card from his funeral, a rose from his casket and a letter.

 

The letter instructs whoever finds the capsule, when the theater is eventually torn down, to give the items to the descendants of the Sadowski family.

 

The plaque alerts performers that they’re only a foot away from the edge of the stage.

 

Chick Sadowski, Sean’s mother, also hopes it will be a warning to all students that life is short and to think before they act.

 

About $3,000 in contributions collected in Sean’s memory went to the school’s theater department.

 

The money will be used to purchase a closed-circuit television and video system. The equipment will allow the orchestra and actors and actresses in dressing rooms to see action on stage. It also will allow students to evaluate their own performances.

 

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