Barbara Creighton knows her son, Curtis Creighton, is trying to contact her, even though the recent ISU graduate died Saturday in Chicago.

“Monday morning, it was just me and my mother here, and I was just so full [of emotion], I was just crying,” Barbara Creighton said. “I tried to go into the living room where my mother wouldn’t hear me, but she did.

“And she says, ‘You know, Curtis reminds me of a monarch butterfly. He lit up everything and everyone that he touched.'”

Barbara Creighton kept that in mind as she took her usual walk around a football field near her home.

“Everywhere I looked on the football field, there was a monarch butterfly just fluttering,” she said. “When I came back home I told my mother, ‘You won’t believe this.’

“‘He’s trying to let you know he is OK,’ my mother said,” Barbara Creighton said.

Curtis, 32, who graduated from Iowa State in December with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies, died Saturday after his motorcycle collided with a sport utility vehicle on Chicago’s South Side.

Police reports said the SUV was making a left turn when it and Curtis’ motorcycle collided. The accident is still under investigation.

Barbara Creighton received the call from a family friend Saturday evening. Curtis had been out all day, watching college football games with his friends at a North Side bar. Barbara Creighton said she didn’t know the severity of the accident at the time.

“I expected to see Curtis on the grass or sidewalk and his bike bent up or something,” she said.

When Barbara Creighton arrived at the scene, the street was blocked off. A family friend told her Curtis had been taken to Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

“By that time, I was a basket case,” she said. “But he didn’t suffer.”

Curtis’ friends at Iowa State said they agreed with his grandmother — he lit up every room he entered.

LeQuetia Ancar, graduate student in industrial education and technology, had known Curtis since she was an undergraduate.

“He was lovable,” she said. “[He was] well-known. He touched a lot of people’s lives, to say the least.”

Bradford Johnson, president of the Black Student Alliance, agreed.

“He was very active in the black community at Iowa State,” said Johnson, senior in meteorology. “He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet.”

Curtis was a member of the Mu Theta chapter of Omega Psi Phi, a historically black fraternity. The fraternity is no longer active at Iowa State, said Christopher Henri, president of the National Pan-Hellenic Council at Iowa State, the governing body of ISU’s historically black greek fraternities and sororities. Henri said Curtis was influential in ISU’s black greek system.

“He was just like a big brother to a lot of people on campus,” Henri said. “He was a model greek man.” Melanie Smith Williams, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies and member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, agreed.

“He really loved his fraternity,” Smith said. “He was an Omega man. When you think of him, you think of his organization. You can’t really talk about Curt without talking about Omega Psi Phi.”

“I don’t know if there is a word to describe somebody who just loves life like that [and] lives life to the fullest,” Smith added. “He was always a nice guy.”