PHOENIX — Theo Duncan was busy studying in his dorm at ASU. It was the end of March and he was approaching final exams for his freshman year. All of a sudden, his phone rang. It was his father's girlfriend delivering the gut-wrenching news that his father had died in a snorkeling accident.
Theo, 19, ran out of his dorm room. He frantically walked up and down the street looking for an Uber or a taxi. He needed to get to his younger sister, Tara.
He didn't know it but Tara was hours away in Tucson for a Model UN class trip. He had no choice but to call her.
“He's telling me, he's trying to break the news slowly," Tara Duncan recalled. "Everything sort of froze.”
19 and 17 year old siblings left behind after single father dies in Curacao
To them, their father, Keith Duncan, was invincible.
“He was really all about traveling the world and living life to the fullest," Tara said.
Keith was a single father to his two children. They lived in Phoenix but together, they traveled the world.
“Hawaii and Jamaica, we'd go to the Bahamas and such, and we'd go scuba diving in all these areas," Theo said.
Keith was a helicopter pilot in the Army. His love for flying and adventure ultimately led him to becoming a commercial airline pilot for JetBlue.
“He was always like, come on, you know, push yourself. You gotta go outside your box. You gotta try new things," Tara said.
On his days off, Keith enjoyed skydiving, scuba diving, hiking or skiing.
He was a proud pilot but an even prouder dad.
“He’d tell us multiple stories about failures that he's had on his plane and just kind of blow it off like it was no big deal. I remember one of the biggest things he had is when he was flying out of the Caribbean and he had an engine blowout," Theo said.
But while on a layover in Curacao with his girlfriend, Keith was snorkeling. Few details are available but he had an accident and drowned within minutes of being in the water.
Theo and Tara were in Arizona with no family that they knew of.
Keith's friends stepped in to help.
“From Reykjavik down to Brazil, Austin to Austria. There were people around the world that had interacted with Keith that came out of basically the woodwork to help us out with stuff," said Douglas Taylor, a fellow pilot and friend of Keith's. "We hit it off because in aviation, there's only three percent of us are African American. And so when you see another African American in aviation, you're like, we're gonna be friends and we were."
Douglas Taylor runs an online forum for aviation professionals around the world. He shared the news of Keith's death in a post and it sent shockwaves through the community, a community that is trying to rally around Theo and Tara. The teens are left to deal with documents and the legal and financial challenges associated with losing a life in a foreign country.
Family friends have set up a GoFundMe page to assist the kids as they move forward and try to deal with their grief. You can find a link to donate here.
“I'm just trying to do exactly what I thought he'd be proud of and what he'd expect me to do," Theo said.
Theo continues to study computer science at ASU and Tara will be senior in high school with dreams of becoming a doctor. They are sharing their father's adventurous life with the world while carrying his superhero spirit with them every step of the way.
“Even though his life did get cut short, he definitely can say that he did a lot more than a lot of other people would do in their entire lifespan. And I think that's really something to focus on when looking back at things," Tara said.
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