After Trey bought his home in Wichita two years ago he asked me to cook Easter dinner for him and his roomates.  His request was for fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy!  (I hate to cook chicken but I did even though his stove only had 3 burrners on it and they didn't work very well.)  The next year Trey called and asked if I was going to cook Easter dinner again.  Told him yes.  He asked what I was cooking.  I said fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  I asked if he didn't remember what he'd asked for.  He said "he just wanted to hear me say it!"  Then he said he had good news and bad news.  The bad news was that I would be cooking for 17!  The good news was that he had bought me a new stove, refirgerator, dishwasher, and microwave.  It turned out to be good news and good news.  We had a wonderful day with everyone there.  In the pictures you can see him cooking "his pan of fried chicken"!  We love you Trey.

Mom & Dad

Trey Duncan offered bear hugs, affectionately belly-bumped his best friend, and never hung up the phone without telling his parents "Love you."

 The 35-year-old died suddenly, of sleep apnea, on Oct. 8, in the midst of a life filled with family, friends and children.

Duncan was born Dec. 8, 1975, in Shreveport, La., the son of W.R. and Karen Duncan, who were both active rodeo performers. As an infant, he was easy to care for, sleeping in the front carrier Karen Duncan wore, which enabled her to ride a horse while she and W.R. checked cattle.

His first horse was Misty, a Welsh pony. With his parents, he became active in the Kansas Western Horseman Association. He was only 6 years old when he won the KWKA pole-bending contest while riding his mother's Appaloosa mare. 

While he loved horses, his passion turned to football and by the time he was in Liberal West Middle School he was a confirmed University of Oklahoma fan and tossing his own football. He went on to play on the offensive and defensive line for the 1993 state football champion Liberal Redskin team. By the time he played football at Pittsburg State University, he was 6-foot-3 and weighed 300 pounds. The team went to nationals, but it was one of only three times in his young football career that his team lost a game.

Mike Mohr remembered the first time he met Duncan in Liberal. They had an awkward confrontation. The next meeting went better and their friendship evolved from there. 

"We bypassed friends a long time ago and became family," said Mohr, who with his wife, Micha, lived with Duncan in Colorado Springs and Wichita, before Duncan bought his own home. They had adjoining backyards and flowed easily into one another's lives.

Like brothers, "one would start a sentence and the other would finish it," W.R. Duncan said. 

"We could be with each other and not even talk," Mohr said, recalling the time they watched an 18-hour "Lord of the Rings" movie marathon together.

"When it was over, Trey turned to me and said, "Well, that's 18 hours we'll never get back."

Duncan also loved children.

"He was a kid magnet. My children considered him their big brother," Mohr said. "If Trey ran a day care center, it would have been the most successful on the planet." 

He traveled often with his work as Midwest regional manager for Rocky Mountain Inventory of Denver. He even spent four months in the Middle East and Europe on assignment with the company. During down time the neighborhood would gather in Trey's "man cave" to watch football games on his big-screen TV.

Friends have told the Duncans that if someone talked to Trey for 20 seconds they had a friend for life.

"We had 35 years of joy with him," W.R. Duncan said.

He brought joy into the lives of so many friends with his easy smile and laughter. 

"You could see the love he had for his parents. They were always on his mind," Mohr said." Trey was a good son."