“Karlijn wasn’t on that plane, right?”
IU student Meghan McCormick read this text message when she was out running errands the afternoon of July 17.
When she dropped Karlijn Keijzer off at the airport in May, she knew Keijzer was headed home to Amsterdam for the summer on a research grant. McCormick had no idea Keijzer had decided to take a mid-summer vacation via Malaysia Airlines.
Keijzer was one of 298 people to die when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine July 17. Keijzer was Dutch-American, a member of the IU rowing team during the 2010-11 season and a graduate student at IU studying chemistry.
After rushing home, McCormick saw Keijzer’s sister had posted Keijzer’s flight information on Facebook. It matched the plane on the news.
McCormick knew before confirmation.
***
One of Mark Sprowl’s coworkers saw Keijzer post pictures of herself and her boyfriend at the Amsterdam airport.
The couple was getting away for a vacation and posted a selfie the morning before the flight.
Then Sprowl, who was a graduate student with Keijzer studying chemistry and had known her for three years, saw the news. A plane flying from Amsterdam had crashed.
“We thought, ‘There’s no way this one plane coming from Amsterdam was the one she was on,’” Sprowl said.
He looked on her Facebook page. Her sister had posted her flight information.
It was Flight 17, Malaysia Airlines.
***
Jessica Myrick thought she would see her friend Karlijn Keijzer’s picture on the national news someday.
But not like this.
The news hit Keijer’s workout buddy Myrick hard.
“I thought in a couple decades we would see her picture on the news because she found some cure for cancer,” Myrick said of her friend Keijzer.
Myrick paused, trying to compose herself.
“It was hard to see her picture up there,” she said. “But even just looking at her picture, you could see that smile and what kind of person she was.”
***
Keijzer had a slight Dutch accent . She was a workout fiend . She didn’t like getting up early in the morning . She liked getting pizza and beer with her friends . Sometimes she played her music too loud and annoyed her co-workers .
Keijzer studied inorganic chemistry under Professor Mu-Huyn Baik. Baik is the principal investigator and adviser in a research group of Ph.D. candidates, undergraduates and high school students he calls “Baik Group.” They used computer simulations of molecular models to test their own hypotheses, working towards large goals like turning carbon into fuel.
The chemistry department at IU is so intensive that many people jokingly say they could call their advising doctors “father,” Baik said.
But spending almost 50 hours a week in a lab together, the line between teacher and father figure becomes blurred, he said.
“We train them really from the beginning, and we make them a scientist,” he said.
As Keijzer’s adviser, he was approached with worries, self-doubts and questions he never thought he’d have to answer as a professor, but he had to step up.
“We basically work from morning to night,” Baik said. “I teach everyone in my group one to one. It’s very close, very dear to me.”
Before she boarded the plane to Amsterdam in May, Keijzer was working on a project to cure early stages of Alzheimer’s.
McCormick was also part of Baik group, which is how she met Keijzer. They were roommates this past spring.
Keijzer’s desk is still sitting next to hers.
Baik’s research group required 50 hours of work per week.
McCormick remembers spending the day working with Keijzer, only to come home and do more work.
“We would just draw strength from each other,” she said.
Keijzer could tell when she was in a bad mood, she said, and they’d always go to Kirkwood. She would get coffee cake and Keijzer would get iced lemon cake from Starbucks.
When they were home, they would cook and bake together. They swapped recipes all the time.
Keijzer was encouraging, but she wouldn’t give any false pretenses, McCormick said.
McCormick said Keijzer would always say “Well I’m Dutch, I say it how it is.”
Keijzer was from Amsterdam, and attended the Free University of Amsterdam before coming to IU in 2010 as a graduate student.
Keijzer was a native of Amsterdam, but also a Hoosier . She came to IU four years ago and joined Steve Peterson’s rowing team as a renowned international prospect.
She rowed only a year for IU, deciding to pursue academics full time. When she was on the water, her skills were apparent to those around her.
“She was arguably the best person on the team at the time,” coach Peterson said.
Keijzer was the stroke of the boat, meaning she was the one who set the tone for the rest of the girls. She was the leader who helped changed to culture of IU rowing into what it is today: a national title contender.
“She was a force,” Peterson said. “That was the first team that made the national ranking s. The impact she had on our program lasts to this day, and it’s going to last a lot longer than that. I’m sure.”
Other than being a great rower, Peterson remembers Keijzer’s smile the most, her fun-loving personality and her dedication to hard work.
But right now, like so many other people around the world mourning the loss of their loved ones, Peterson is just confused.
“I’m not a big world news person, and I’m not totally understanding why this thing was shot down,” Peterson said. “But for someone who probably didn’t have an enemy in the world and to love life like she did, for this to happen this way, it’s crazy.”
Peterson called her meticulous and a perfectionist. Keijzer always paid great attention to the tiniest details, refusing to be anything other than excellent.
And that’s how Natalie Schumann will remember her most: a perfectionist.
Schumann was an instructor at the SRSC, and taught a class called SwimFIT. The class taught people the basic mechanics of swimming.
When Schumann taught her first class in the spring of 2012, she had never done anything like it and was nervous going in.
One of the people who signed up for the class was Keijzer.
A few weeks into the class, Schumann always found herself staying late after class because of Keijzer.
“She was really enthusiastic,” Schumann said. “She would always stay after, work on her strokes. She wanted to be perfect in every aspect.”
Schumann said even though she only knew Keijzer for six weeks, she made a lasting impression.
Keijzer was one of 298 people who died on that plane, but she was more than a statistic.
“She’s the kind of student who makes you love teaching,” Schumann said.
“I’ll always remember her smile and her competitive spirit,” Myrick said, fighting off tears.
“She loved life,” Peterson said. “She was fun- loving.”
“In the graduate program, everybody is kind of worried about their own problems,” Sprowl said. “But she was always worried about everybody else’s.”
