ETA This is the first time to read that a drug- addled person crept up behind Erin and pushed her inside the apt.
Palm Beach resident channels the pain of losing child into helping at-risk kids
By Wendy Rhodes Apr 29, 2019 rbbm.
"Fiji Water founder and his wife donate $10M for Opportunity school in West Palm Beach
Some people say there is no greater heartbreak than that of losing a child.
David Gilmour is one of those people.
“It’s with you every day,” Gilmour says of having his only child, Erin, die when she was 22.
Gilmour and his wife Jillian, Erin’s stepmother, have lived part-time in Palm Beach for 25 years. Gilmour is best-known as the founder of Fiji Water but has also started 15 other companies and authored a book.
Like many Palm Beach residents, the Gilmours are philanthropic. They recently donated $10 million to start an endowment fund for
Opportunity, an upscale preschool in Westgate, a blighted, unincorporated area of West Palm Beach."
"Gilmour’s passion for early childhood education was inspired by his daughter.
She was an amazing little pied piper,” he says. “She loved kids, and kids loved her.”
But Erin was never able to fulfill her dream of working with children. On a frigid night in 1983, she was murdered.
It was Christmastime in Toronto. Erin had just moved into a new apartment — her first taste of independence. She was so excited.
One evening, Erin arrived home and put her key in the front door lock. She didn’t know that a drug-addled man had crept up behind her. He pushed her inside.
“After the rage subsides and the watershed is subsiding, you learn to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Gilmour says of living with the horror of knowing what happened to Erin. “My daughter is in a better place.”
Today, Gilmour smiles when he talks about Erin. But that peace of mind did not come easily. After Erin’s murder, Gilmour grew despondent and began to self-medicate with Valium and vodka.
Two years later, he was on a downward spiral — until something strange and wonderful happened when he and Jillian were on a getaway in France: Erin visited him.
A message from beyond
“She said,
Daddy, what are you doing? I just want to be proud of you. I’m all right — you’re not. Make me proud of you,” Gilmour says of Erin’s words.
That morning, he flushed the Valium down the toilet. “I think the fish in the Avallon river are still stoned,” he says.
With Jillian’s love and support, Gilmour pulled himself together. However, still consumed by grief, he vowed to never have more children.
“David didn’t really want to be that vulnerable again,” Jillian says. “He couldn’t even take the dogs leaving the room.”
The couple channeled their anguish into action, opening nine schools worldwide before partnering locally with Opportunity."
"It has been more than 35 years since Erin died. Her case has been reopened five times, but her murderer, whose DNA also links him to other murders, has not been caught.
At 87, Gilmour knows he may never see his daughter’s killer brought to justice. But his dedication to fulfilling her dreams gives him purpose and hope.
“Daddy . . . I just want to be proud of you . . . Make me proud of you.”
Through what they call the most important philanthropic undertaking of their lives, the Gilmours have found a way to ensure that the ethereal presence of their beautiful pied piper endures: They have named Opportunity’s new building The Erin H. Gilmour Early Learning Center."