The Boulder community mourned two friends who died in the accident

The Boulder community mourned the loss of two friends this week in a Diagonal Highway accident on Monday night.

Friends and family say Brock Borman, 56, and David Vollmar, 53, were on their way home from their normal trip to Longmont to play table tennis when the car they were driving hit in a two-vehicle accident. It was a sport that both men played at a high level and they were very competitive.

“When we first met when he moved to the neighborhood, he talked about table tennis, and I asked,‘ What is table tennis? “” Vollmar’s girlfriend Tammy Richards said. “So he showed me the video, and I said, ‘Oh, ping pong.’ He was like, “It’s not ping pong.” He takes it very seriously. So I asked him, ‘Are you telling me if we were at the bar and they want to play around the world, you don’t play? He said, ‘No. Well, maybe I would play with my left hand. “

And so Vollmar and Borman played table tennis on Monday night, probably at closing time, as usual.

“There he was coming home that night,” Richards said. “They just couldn’t get home.”

“He just loved people so much”

In addition to table tennis, Borman served as Vollmar’s tennis coach, and they had known each other for over 20 years.

“They were friends for years,” Richards said.

In addition to tennis and table tennis, Borman was also a nationally acclaimed player and ambassador for sports tennis, which is played on a smaller court surrounded by a cage. He had also recently played golf. If it involved hitting the ball with a stick, Borman was good at it.

“He was such a good athlete, he could do anything,” said Borman’s friend Steve Filmer.

But when he was a tough competitor, friends said Borman had a bad sense of humor, which often manifested in photoshopped images of himself and his friends.

“He’s one of the funniest individuals you’ve ever met,” Filmer said. “And when you combine his sense of humor and skill with Photoshop … He was really, really good at capturing and bringing out humor in matters.”

Filmer said Borman was a rarity in today’s world, a man who would rather show up at your front door than send a text message or email. Even one will announce their visit.

“He just loved people so much, I think he’d rather ask for forgiveness than ask permission if he really wanted to see the person,” Filmer said. “It’s a trait that was so rare nowadays; he just wanted to be around people and he was so good at it.”

When he was killed, Eamonn McNaughton said Borman made one of these visits to his home and teased him because he couldn’t finish the studio in his backyard.

“He was an old school; if he were in the neighborhood, he would stop, no text, no call, ”said McNaughton, who played in the Borman Flat Tennis League. “He just came to greet you and decided to hang on for an hour or two … He ripped you off a little bit. Absolutely awesome guy overall.”

Filmer said he and Borman had a golf tea time this week, and the knowledge that his friend wouldn’t be there was emotional.

“You always think you have more time,” Filmer said. “But Brock lived five lives when it comes to touching people. He made people feel so special, he really invested time in all the people around him, and he was loved.

“He just lived such a rich life, I’m grateful to know him. I think all the people he was friends with would agree. “

“He was never anyone but himself”

Most who knew Vollmar knew him as Kavika rather than David, a nickname born of need and a trip to Polynesia.

“We had a honeymoon in the Cook Islands, and he worked in an office where half the people were named David,” Vollmar’s ex-wife Angelique Espinoza said. “He chose Kavika because that’s how you write in David’s Polynesia, we had just returned from this wonderful place, and it just got stuck.”

Vollmar was born in Germany but came to visit Colorado as part of an exchange program and of course to play table tennis and eventually invited Boulder home.

“He was going to fully return to Germany,” Espinoza said. “But he came here, to this beautiful place … He loved the mountains and nature. He was a great environmentalist, he loved hiking and skiing as well as mountain biking and everything related to the mountains.”

According to Espinoza, their 20-year-old son Luka is currently on a memorial backpack trip in memory of his father.

“They were really close, they were really, really close,” Espinoza said. “He was the best father.”

Vollmar worked as a software designer first on a startup called Gnip and then on Twitter when it opened its Boulder office.

“He was definitely incredibly smart,” said Eric Ryan, who met Vollmar when they worked together at Gnip about 10 years ago. “Very quickly you can see the passion that is evident in the work he is doing, but I also found that he was good at introducing timed lightness to any situation.”

Ryan remembered that knowing each other for just a couple of years, Vollmar was one of the few co-workers who always went to Pennsylvania for Ryan’s wedding, which Ryan said only to show what kind of person Vollmar was.

“He was always very generous with his time,” Ryan said. “He was also really great at mentoring and raised those around him.”

Richards said he was moved, but not surprised, to have attended the celebrations of Vollmar’s life at work and heard so many stories about him.

“I said,‘ I don’t know any of you, I just want you to know how reassuring these stories are for me, ”Richards said. “Everyone talked about how he taught them, how talented he was and how confident he was. Yeah, it’s my husband. “

Richards said my friend admitted that Vollmar had given him the task of secretly trying out Richards ’ring size and had looked at the suggestion, which should have been the next step on the journey that began with Richards seeing a“ hot new guy with an accent in the neighborhood ”. “

Richards said at first he didn’t even realize they were dating.

“He’s still very German, so he’s a very fact,” Richards said. “So when Americans spend 10 minutes saying goodbye, he just said,‘ OK, I have to go. “And I’d be like, ‘Wow, okay.'”

Richards said at first he wasn’t sure if Vollmar was ready to socialize after his divorce and move.

“But of course he did,” Richards said. “And it was perfect.”

Richards added: “I just want everyone to know that this tough German was the most loving person… It was genuine and sincere. He was never anyone but himself. “