The text message, delivered from some miracle of a Wi-Fi zone in the Himalayas, hit Christof Meyer’s phone at 6 a.m. on May 16.
A piece of rope, fastened to his down suit, keeps Katz’s pennant secure as he summits Mount Everest. (Contributed photo)
Andrew Katz’s fingers were perhaps too cold to type. All he could muster was an image he knew would be worth a thousand words to his friend and mentor. Amid a blue sky and above snow-capped mountains, Katz, his face covered in ski goggles and an oxygen mask, body protected by a down suit, hands gloved, holds a University of Virginia pennant over his head.
It was early in Boulder, Colorado, and Meyer was screaming. Katz had summited Mount Everest.
“Wahoowa my guy!” Meyer responded.
Katz began his first year at the Darden School of Business this week, three months after he simultaneously completed one life goal while preparing for the next. UVA was top of mind when he stood on the top of the world’s tallest mountain.
He had even secured the pennant to his suit in order to guard against the elements at 29,000 feet.
“No matter how windy it was,” Katz said, “I was going to have to be blown away myself to lose that thing.”
That small piece of felt carries weight for Katz’s UVA story.
The pennant originates with Meyer, a 2009 Darden School alumnus, who purchased it at Mincer’s in 2007. By the time the U.S. Army veteran’s path crossed with Katz’s 11 years later, the memento had become a fixture on a wall of many of his residences.
The UVA pennant originates with Katz’s fellow U.S. Army veteran, Christof Meyer. Meyer, left, is a 2009 Darden School alumnus who now lives in Colorado and is a constant source of knowledge for Katz, right. (Contributed photo)
“Everywhere I’ve gone,” said Meyer, who now runs a landscape ecology business in Colorado, “it’s had a pretty prominent place. It makes me proud of the institution and has created this long-term affiliation with UVA.”
That influence began to rub off on Katz, a U.S. Military Academy alumnus, in, of all places, a foxhole in southern Georgia during an Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course.
While in an extended field training session, Meyer, in passing, referenced his Darden School education, prompting Katz, the brother of a UVA graduate, to express both interest and doubt about the institution being a part of his future.
“It would be a dream, but how could I ever get in?” Meyer recalled Katz asking him. “And I told him, ‘You can do it, man.’ And from that point on, we worked on it.”
“The seed for Darden,” Katz said, “was sown from a very, very early stage in the military.”
In the meantime, Katz served as an infantry officer, completed Army Ranger School and commanded personnel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. He also furthered his mountaineering hobby, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Aconcagua in Argentina and Mount Rainier in Washington, among other notable ascents.
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