‘You’d see his smile and it was just infectious’: Dan Hollis’s friends, family devastated by news of brain injury

Dan Hollis is someone family and friends said they could go to on a bad day and he was guaranteed to make you smile.

Now, those closest to him are grappling with what the world would be like without him.

Hollis, a sophomore at Emerson College and a member of its men’s lacrosse team, is believed to have been hit and then fell during an altercation among other college-aged men near the Allston-Brighton line early Saturday morning. The brain damage he sustained is said to be severe enough that he won’t be able to live, even with life support, according to his family. He’s not expected to regain consciousness. 

With the weight of the news, family members and friends have shared bits and pieces of their memories of Hollis, shedding light on who he is.

Liz Hollis Fulks, Hollis’s aunt, said her two sons look up to him, and that he’s a “superhero” to them.

“Tonight I had the awful job of a parent to inform my boys that even superheroes are not invincible,” she wrote on Facebook. “You can imagine the outcome. Hearts are broken and I have no band aid to heal them.”

Hollis Fulks wrote that she’s hoping for a miracle.

“This senseless act came from what I can only imagine was a type of aggression that went too far,” she said. “Perhaps we can all take a moment to catch out breath, calm down, talk to each other in a loving manner, send loving kindness to those we are in conflict with.”

https://www.facebook.com/hollisfulks/posts/10220206505538710

Christie Sether, Hollis’s girlfriend, posted several pictures of them together on Instagram. She first asked him out in the 6th grade, she wrote.

“You were strong, brave, selfless, handsome, caring, kind, loving, & so funny it was annoying,” she said. “But I would give anything to laugh with you again right now. I don’t know how to live in a world without you in it and I’ve always prayed that I would never have to, but I do know I will figure it out and you would want me to be strong.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3E516NglWf/

“You made me laugh harder than I ever thought possible.” Dan Hollis’ girlfriend says he made world a brighter place. Hollis, an Emerson student & Hopedale native, was badly injured after a scuffle outside a party on Saturday night. He’s not expected to wake up, per family. #WBZ pic.twitter.com/nVW0c7DSIV

— Kristina Rex (@KristinaRex) October 1, 2019

R.J. Stansbury, a former hockey teammate of Hollis, said in an interview with CBS Boston that Hollis was someone he’d turn to for positivity.

“You’d see his smile and it was just infectious,” he said. “If you were having a bad day you’d go and talk to Danny.”

Eric Moxim served as Hollis’s lacrosse coach in the past – he first met Hollis in seventh grade.

“He was just the most remarkable person,” he said in an interview with WCVB.

A GoFundMe online fundraising page was set up for the Hollis’s family. As of around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, it had raised over $7,000, doubling the goal of $3,000.