The memorial service for Paly sophomore Travis Brewer will be held at 4 p.m. on Sunday in the Paly gym.

Brewer died peacefully in his sleep Sunday night due to heart failure, according to Christina Bono, parent of Brewer’s close friend, sophomore Christoph Bono. Teachers told Paly students about Brewer’s death during fourth period on Monday.

All this week, the Palo Alto community has been reacting to the devastating news.

“It seems like it [the news of Brewer’s death] is starting to sink in,” Paly band director Jeff Willner said.

Christoph Bono was texting Brewer on Sunday night, just before Brewer went to sleep.

“It never crossed my mind that something like that could happen,” Bono said, referring to Brewer’s unexpected death.

Brewer managed Paly’s frosh/soph football and varsity baseball teams and was well-known in the Paly sports community. Bono, a frosh/soph football player, said that Brewer was at practice every day, helping out.

“He just made the practice that much more fun,” Bono said.

Head frosh/soph football coach Dave Duran also praised Brewer’s involvement in Paly’s sports community.

“He was part of the team out there,” Duran said. “A lot of it is the camaraderie between the players. Travis loved all that.”

Brewer also did a little bit of backseat coaching.

“He always had coaching tips for me and [assistant football] coach [Jason] Fung and coach [Mike] Fukuhara and coach Stu [Pederson],” Duran said.

Last week, Joe DeFransesco, a member of the maintenance crew for the Paly athletics facilities, painted “King Brewer Field” on the football practice fields.

“He [Brewer] was all jacked up about that,” Duran said.

Duran has known Brewer for about 10 years, and speaks fondly of him.

“He had a really gregarious personality,” Duran said. “He always liked talking to the coaches. He loved coming in here [the boys’ locker room athletics office].”

“We were almost going to put his name on the door,” Fung said. “He was here more than I was!”

Brewer had the same prep period as Duran, and would always visit him.

“He’d come in every morning and go, ‘I’m hungry,'” Duran said. “A couple of days a week we’d go down to the Creamery; he had to have his bacon and French toast. I’ll miss all of that.”

People who speak about Brewer often mention the little things he would do that made them happy.

“He would always call Mr. Diepenbrock ‘Peter,'” Duran said. “That would make me laugh. You’d have all these other little scared freshmen walking in here [the boys’ locker room athletics office], and he’d come in here: ‘Hey Peter, what are we doing today?'”

In the Paly band, Brewer was known with similar fondness.

“You couldn’t dislike the guy,” Willner said. “It was impossible.”

“He [Brewer] always had good spirit,” Brewer’s fellow drummer, sophomore Nick Tumminaro said.

Tumminaro also commented on the number of activities and programs in which Brewer was involved.

“He was a part of everything,” Tumminaro said.

Duran expressed a similar sentiment when he spoke about Brewer’s participation in Paly athletics and the band, and his work at the Veterans’ Affairs hospital in Palo Alto.

“I don’t think many people know how many lives he actually touched,” Duran said. “Everybody knew Travis.”

A perfect example of Brewer’s wide sphere of influence is 2008 Gunn graduate Kyle Einfalt, who played on a Palo Alto American Legion baseball team with Brewer the past few summers.

“Travis reached way farther than just the students at Paly,” Einfalt said. “Travis was someone who didn’t care who you were or where you were from; he was all about the team and keeping the team morality high.”

Einfalt, who will be playing baseball at UC-Davis this year, and his teammates always enjoyed Brewer’s outgoing personality and recognized his profound impact on the team itself.

“The team always gave Travis a hard time in a playful way because we knew he would always fire back at us, and that’s what we loved about him,” Einfalt said. “He was the best thing to happen to that team.”

The enthusiasm that Einfalt mentioned is evident in how people talk about Brewer’s preferred greeting: the good, old-fashioned high-five.

“You’d just see him going to class and he’d give you a big high-five,” sophomore drummer Noah Miller said.

The trend is easy to see from looking at the wall of the Facebook group created for Brewer, “RIP Travis.” There are numerous posts detailing Brewer’s high-fives.

In addition to improving his high-fiving form, Brewer had been rapidly developing his talent for drumming.

“His progress exceeded all expectations as a freshman drummer,” Willner said. “By the end of last year, he was ready to go into the upperclassman band.”

According to Willner, Brewer really hit his stride in the past year.

“Things were coming together in a lot of ways for Travis, and that’s what makes this whole thing so sad,” Willner said.

If the comments on Palo Alto Online in response to stories about Brewer and the current 689 members of “RIP Travis” are any indication, Brewer will be sorely missed. He will be missed for all of the laughter and honesty he brought into the world, but also for something else, something less concrete.

“I just miss Travis for being Travis,” Duran said. “It’s hard to define. If you knew him, it’s just… Travis.”