16-02-2025
Board game event raises funds for organization to keep teen's memory alive
Trinity Ripley loved board games, her father said.
So her family decided to focus the first fundraiser for the organization formed in her memory around board games.
'Trinity was full of life and laughter. And she was great at bringing everyone together,' her father, former Brunswick City Councilman Vaughn Ripley, told the people gathered at a building in Brunswick City Park Saturday for a fundraiser for the group Trinity's Children.
The organization will raise money to increase awareness for issues around addiction, fentanyl, alcohol, overdose, and mental health, her mother, Kristine Ripley, said.
Trinity, 18, died on Dec. 13, 2023, after taking half a pill that she thought was Percocet that was laced with fentanyl, she said.
She would have turned 20 on Feb. 10.
There were several dozen board games of various types and formats, stacked on each of the tables at Saturday's event.
'Let's have some fun and let's make a difference, folks. Game on,' Vaughn Ripley, said urging players to begin playing.
At one table, Brad Wells and Karl Musser were playing Flamecraft, in which villagers in the form of dragons go to different shops to gather supplies, Wells said.
'It is a very peaceful game," he said.
Wells said the event offered a chance to spend an afternoon playing games and supporting a good cause.
He said he loves video games, but board games offer a different, more tactile experience.
Musser said he knows Vaughn Ripley through gaming events, and met Trinity once or twice.
He said he likes the social aspect that board games provide.
'It's an excuse to get together,' he said.
Trinity loved to play board games, and they wanted to do a family-friendly event for the organization's first fundraiser, her father said.
He said he hopes to use his relationships with officials in other municipalities in the county and the Maryland Municipal League to hold events to raise awareness about the dangers of fentanyl.
Kristine Ripley said her daughter struggled with alcohol use and mental health issues, and had been sober for two weeks before she died.
'She was struggling with something, and we never got to the bottom of it,' Kristine said.
Trinity was part of the Brunswick community, a friendly and 'very bubbly teenager,' City Councilwoman Angel White said Saturday.
The event was in Trinity's memory, but also to focus on the general issue of drug use and the dangers of fentanyl, she said.
'We don't want this sad story in other people's lives,' she said.
Leigh Anderson, a longtime friend of the Ripley family and the secretary for Trinity's Children, helped with Saturday's event.
She said she met Kristine at a group in Frederick for new mothers, and their children grew up together.
Trinity was always engaging, the kind of teenager who would talk easily with adults when others might tend to keep to themselves, she said.
Anderson said she lost her stepson to an overdose in 2012.
'I hate to say it, but it's another thing that binds us,' she said.
Parents always think about what they could have done differently, she said.
But she said it's also important for them to forgive themselves for not always seeing all of the signs.
Ultimately, all people can do is make kids as aware as possible of the dangers of drugs, she said.
