When I started working at the Picayune all those years ago, one of my first stories for the paper centered on a remarkable kid spending his summer in a most unusual place.

Kendrick Cutsinger was not yet in fifth grade, but he already had his eyes on the prize of Friday nights. He spent his summer days on a scorched hillside in East Austin, racing up the slope as part of trainer Carment Kiara’s grueling summer workouts. Although he trained alongside college and high school athletes at the camp, Kendrick never listened to anyone that said he was too young to run.

When Kendrick joined Westlake’s varsity football team as a strapping 16-year-old, he did a little of everything. He played tight end, he played quarterback and he played on the defensive line. He never listened to those who said he was too young to take on so many responsibilities.

But listen now, Kendrick. You were too young to die.

Kendrick died on a sunny Friday afternoon along an open Hill Country road in an instant that makes us look upward in anguish and wonder. He was 20 years old.

As Picayune photographer Paul Brick and I rounded a sweeping curve on Highway 71 north of Llano Friday, we commented on the clear skies and crisp air left in the wake of the season’s first cool front. We were aimed for Abilene, where Westlake was to face off against Abilene Cooper.

It was a perfect day for football or a dove hunt, with a northern breeze stirring the cedar. Paul, a former traffic accident investigator for the Austin Police Department, shook his head as we slowly moved past the wreckage. Local sheriff’s officers had just arrived, and the tragedy glimpsed through a car window seemed out of place alongside the green grass and rolling ridges that unfurled away from the road.

It was too nice a day to die.

But Kendrick did die on that bend in the road. I heard from Newt Hasson in the sidelines of Shotwell Stadium that Kendrick had passed away earlier that day in a car accident. I then read in Saturday’s paper about the tragedy in Llano County, and a quick call confirmed the spot of the wreck.

Kendrick, a junior football player and business major at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, was traveling home on Labor Day weekend for a final summer escape from the grind of football practice and study hall. Kendrick wanted to see his dad, Gary, a grizzled former defensive lineman for the Houston Oilers. He wanted to see his younger sister, Kendra, his “partner in crime,” as Kendrick’s mother would say.

Most of all, Kendrick wanted to see his mom, Pam, who bravely fought off a lengthy illness during his senior year at Westlake. Kendrick, a 2008 Westlake graduate, spent his senior year shuffling between Austin and Houston, where Pam stayed for treatment during her illness. He was too young to bear such an emotional burden, but he did without complaint or comment.

Kendrick was too young to die.

Funeral services will be at 3 p.m. Thursday at Riverbend Church, 4214 Capital of Texas Highway N.