(WETUMPKA, Ala.) - Tuesday night the Collar family joined Gil's friends and the Wetumpka community for a candlelight vigil at his former high school.
We have not seen dozens, but hundreds of people here at Tuesday night’s candlelight vigil. It's a sad, but happy testament to how many lives this young man touched.
"Now he's wrestling with the angels, I'm wrestling with one of my own, Gilbert Collar," said his former wrestling coach Jeff Glass.
There were tears and laughter.
"We all wanted to be like Gil. Our dads all wanted to be like Gil," said one of his former teammates.
They say he was a jokester with a big heart, nicknamed the Murderbird, who always wore
A rubber-duck t-shirt before wrestling matches.
Teammates, wearing Gil's lucky shirt, led his parents into the vigil where friends cried, and laughed, by candlelight.
At the end they had a special send-off, placing hundreds of rubber ducks into the Wetumpka High School pond.
The wrestling coach tells us he's going to collect them all and give them to Gil's parents.
