AUBURN – Her smile got you every time.

Friends and family of Emily Fletcher were still trying to piece together their emotions Monday. Two days earlier, Fletcher, 21, died when her car crossed the center line on Route 2 in West Bethel, struck a guardrail and flipped into the Pleasant River. She was on her way home from the University of Vermont in Burlington. She was a junior studying nutrition and dietary sciences.

On Monday, everyone was talking about her infectious smile.

“She had that Fletcher smile,” said Edward Little track and field coach Dan Campbell, who coached Fletcher on three state championship track and field teams from 1999 to 2001. “When she smiled, she absolutely melted you.”

Anne Martin, a senior track and field athlete at Yale University, was a member of those Edward Little teams with Fletcher, as was Christina Rivard, both of whom gathered with other former teammates and friends at Campbell’s home on Monday.

“The news just started to spread around noon on Sunday,” said Martin. “It was like one big phone chain. She was such an amazing person. I know it’s unfair to measure people against one another, but she was certainly near the top.”

Martin and Fletcher trained together for six years.

“When you spend two hours a day with someone for six years, you get to know one another very, very well,” said Martin. “The winning (at Edward Little) was icing on the cake, really. Just knowing her, you couldn’t help but be friends with her.”

Shy, at first

“It’s still such a big shock right now,” said Rivard. “She was the most amazing girl I had ever met. She could make you smile anytime, and we were always there for each other.”

For a time as a young girl, Fletcher had been shy, barely saying “boo.”

“She was always so quiet, right up to about third or fourth grade,” said her father, Ralph Fletcher. “We went to a Lake Street School play in which she had a small speaking part. She had just one or two words, but those words came booming out. My wife and I had to look twice to make sure we were watching the right kid.”

The social butterfly was born, as the track athlete would be.

“We always used to tease her about walking late,” said Ralph Fletcher. “She always used to tell us, after she got to be such a great runner, that there was a reason for walking late, that she wanted to get it right, because you had to learn to walk before you learn to run properly.”

At the end of her senior year at Edward Little, Emily’s mother, Lyn Elizabeth, passed away.

“I remember, she came to the sports banquet the day that her mother died,” said Campbell. “She was a special person that way. She wanted to be there for her teammates, as their captain, and I think she just wanted to be with that extended family, too.”

Rivard added, “I just wish I could have been there for her this time. I do know, though, that whatever might have happened to her, she didn’t just quit. I know she fought with everything she had as long as she could. That’s just how she was.”

Campbell, Martin, Rivard and many others are gathering that extended family together for a “memorial celebration of a wonderful life” for family and friends, Campbell said. That service is Wednesday.

More s’mores

Sunday night, Edward Little High School Principal Jim Miller opened his house to those who knew her, and several people gathered to share pictures and stories. Miller’s son, Joey, graduated from Edward Little with her. They’d always stage a mini-reunion whenever both were home from college, often going to Miller’s house to hang out and build a bonfire.

“Emily was always the first one to go in the pantry and get out the s’mores,” Miller said. “That or the Ben and Jerry’s.”

Miller called her “a little kid with a tremendous heart.”

On Monday, two counselors from St. Mary’s hospital were available at the high school for students, but with younger brother Sam graduating last year and her own graduation almost four years ago, few students there remembered her well.

Emily and her brothers had made a name for themselves on the athletic fields. Older brother Ben still holds a state record or two in track and field, as does Sam. Emily was a captain on the 2001 state championship girls’ track and field team, and won three consecutive titles as a sophomore, junior and senior.

“Emily gave me something her brothers never gave me as a coach,” said Campbell. “She had charisma and poise above all else. She gave her smile, her love and her compassion to this team. She had a unique passion for the sport, and her tenacity was unmatched.”

“She had a beautiful life,” said Rivard. “Second only to her mother, maybe. She was the strongest girl I had ever met.”

The family has announced that the memorial service will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Lost Valley. Anyone wishing to donate food for the post-memorial celebration is being asked to contact Dan Campbell at 783-2418. Any monetary donations should be made out to Campbell. The donations will be given to the Auburn Public Library.

Sun Journal staff writer Lindsay Tice contributed to this story.