KETTERING — More than 200 people, mostly grieving students, gathered for a candlelight vigil Wednesday night in the Fairmont High School courtyard to honor Megan Fickert, a 15-year-old sophomore who died by her own hand a week earlier.

For 90 minutes, they shared stories about a girl who was fun and outgoing, yet someone they could turn to with their problems.

“I knew I could call her anytime of the day or night,” said her friend, Taylor Connolly. “I wish she had called me that night.”

The vigil was the culmination of a communitywide conversation that has taken place since Fickert’s Oct. 13 death.

An overflow crowd attended the funeral service Tuesday morning at the Newcomer Funeral Home in Kettering.

At her funeral, Pastor Doug Tallman said a life shouldn’t be judged “by one act, one deed,” but by a lifetime of memories. “If Megan could be here today,” he addressed the room packed with sobbing teens, “I think she would urge you not to make the same mistake. She would tell you, 'I regret it. Please forgive me.’”

Only a week before the vigil, Megan had come home from school and applied for a job at a hardware store. “I told her to present herself well and to be sure to call him 'mister,’” said her mother, Michelle Fox.

It was a normal afternoon with Megan talking about job prospects and making plans for the future. By the time Fox came home from work , something was clearly troubling her daughter.

“She wouldn’t talk about it,” Fox said.

Fox found her daughter sitting in the backyard outside her bedroom window. She asked if she wanted to talk about the problem, but Megan didn’t respond. “Whatever you need, Mommy’s here,” Fox said. “You know Mom loves you.”

Fox said she can’t talk about what happened next because it is too painful to recount. According to Kettering police reports, Megan hanged herself. Twelve of the 17 teens who have killed themselves in Montgomery County since 2005 have chosen the same method.

Kent Harshbarger, Montgomery County deputy coroner, said hanging is a common method of teen suicide “because that’s what they have access to. With drugs, people don’t know how much to take.”

Long quest for effective treatment

Fox said her daughter’s struggles with her schoolwork and self-esteem began as early as fifth grade. “I put her in Sylvan Learning Centers, but I took her out because we couldn’t afford it,” she recalled.

It was the beginning of a long and frustrating quest to get Megan the treatment and medication needed to treat her severe depression . It wasn’t easy for the single mother who was always short of funds, but Fox said she and her daughter were very close.

When Megan complained that her medication was making things worse, Fox made an appointment with Megan’s therapist so she could switch medications, but couldn’t get in until November.

The family wants to make one thing very clear: Megan’s friends and classmates aren’t responsible for her death.

“We don’t believe bullying was a factor,” said her brother, Kevin Fickert Jr.

“They are too young to own that guilt,” added her uncle, Frank Mills of Riverside.

Suicide program no longer at Fairmont

Dayton’s Suicide Prevention Center offers Project Lifesaver suicide prevention classes that are used in about half of Montgomery County school districts, as well as in surrounding counties.

Tricia Marks, the center’s president, said Northmont is the only district in Montgomery County where the school board has mandated the classes. Fairmont, where Megan attended, stopped using the program in health classes two years ago.

Kettering schools Superintendent James Schoenlein said he didn’t know details about the end of the Lifesaver classes in Kettering, but said Fairmont’s counseling staff “is very expert in those kinds of things.”

Both Schoenlein and Fairmont Principal Dan VonHandorf mentioned the high school’s homeroom like advisory system — where one teacher stays with the same students all four years — as another way staff can have a feel for kids having trouble.

VonHandorf said Fairmont also has a peer listening program, where students can discuss problems with other students when they might be uncomfortable raising the issue with a parent or other adult.

Marks said there are usually warning signs when teens are in trouble. “Suicidal people don’t want to kill themselves,” she said, “they just want the emotional pain to go away. They’d choose many options before that.”

'You did everything you could’

Freshman Taylor Poliquin, who has known Megan since preschool, said friends were concerned because Megan had come to school crying in recent days. “She said her meds weren’t working. They were making things worse.”

Still, she never thought her friend would kill herself: “I knew she had tried before, but I never thought she’d really do it.”

Now she and hundreds of other teens are left to grapple with a fundamental mystery: How could their friend — so comical, compassionate and full of life — make such an irreversible choice?

Fox has so many regrets, small and large.

She wishes, on the night of Megan’s death, she had asked her to go shopping — a common form of therapy despite their income.

“What did I do wrong?” she sobbed . “I told her I loved her every day.”

Her father, Frank Mills, rubbed her back. “You did good, baby girl. You did everything you could.”

Through her tears she replied, “If I did, she’d still be here.”