An Arlington memorial fund has raised nearly $10,000 in honor of a teen figure skater killed in last month’s mid-air plane crash over the Potomac River.
The Edward “Eddie” Zhou STEM and Figure Skating Enrichment Fund aims to honor two of the late teenager’s passions by supporting Northern Virginia middle and high school-age figure skaters with interests in STEM. One of Zhou’s friends, 15-year-old Charlotte Mount, started the fund this month with the goal of carrying on his memory.
Confronted with the tragic news last month, Mount told ARLnow that she couldn’t bear the thought of the world forgetting Zhou. The two met at the MedStar Capitals Iceplex last year and became friends during near-daily skating practices in Ballston.
“I just thought about how I loved my friend Eddie so much, and I wanted him to be honored as well,” said Mount, who lives in North Arlington. “I didn’t want to feel like he was being forgotten or left out in any way.”
Zhou, 16, was a junior at Woodson High School in Fairfax County and a four-time member of the U.S. Figure Skating National Development Team.
He was the only child of his parents, Yu Zhou and Kaiyan Mao, who also perished in the crash. Those who knew the Zhous remembered them as an “inseparable unit of three” because both parents often attended their son’s skating events together since his early childhood.
Through the years, Zhou grew with ambition and joy into a decorated skater under the tutelage of Kalle Strid and Mikael Olofsson. He was on track to qualify for national championships and hoped to make the national team.
Mount described Zhou as a “joy-maker” with a bright, kind spirit. He was also a star student with a knack for calculus, physics, and chemistry, often assisting other skaters with their homework assignments.
“He had this joyful, inclusive force that he just brought everywhere,” Mount said. “I just felt lucky to know him, and to have somebody like that, you know — that everything surrounding you can just be horrible, but he’ll find a way to make you feel joy, even if you didn’t think that you could.”
Before boarding American Airlines flight 5342 with his parents, Zhou had attended a competitive figure skating training camp and landed the notoriously challenging triple axel jump in Wichita, Kansas.
The Zhous were among the 64 airline passengers and crew members killed in the crash along with three soldiers in a Black Hawk military helicopter.
In the days following Zhou’s death, Mount turned to writing to cope with grief. This soon blossomed into an idea for a memorial fund, which received support from Zhou’s extended family.
“I just realized that he was also a lot more than a skater as well, and I wanted him to be remembered for that,” Mount said.
After consulting with the Washington Figure Skating Club, the Skating Club of Northern Virginia, and dozens of local figure skating parents and coaches, Mount launched the fund via the Arlington Community Foundation.
The fund plans to award $1,000 to one student each year. In less than two weeks, it has garnered nearly enough donations to provide awards for the next decade.
“It never ceases to amaze me what this community will come together to do,” ACF Vice President and Director of Philanthropy Christy Cole told ARLnow. “I would say there’s just very little that we can’t do in Arlington because of so many generous people.”
As the fund approaches $10,000 in donations, Mount is feeling grateful for all of the community members who have contributed. She next intends to create an advisory committee with Zhou’s family and the local skating community to administer the annual award.
“It gives me a lot of hope that his memory will live on, for hopefully longer than we even expected,” she said.
The fund comes as the D.C.-area skating community continues to rally in support of victims’ families. Several GoFundMe fundraisers, including one created by a family friend of the Zhous, have raised thousands for families grieving their loved ones.
U.S. Figure Skating will host a tribute performance, Legacy on Ice, at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 3 at the Capitol One Arena. Funds from the performance will go toward victims’ families, first responders and aviation professionals who responded to the crash.
