Newsday - May 10, 2004

Counselors to help students heal

BY ERIK HOLM
STAFF WRITER

May 10, 2004

The vigils and the mourning have started already, but students from two Nassau high schools will be met this morning at their respective campuses with grief counselors and encouragement to help them cope with the loss of classmates who died in separate accidents Friday night.

At noon, friends of Wheatley School junior Craig Grumet, 17, are expected to fill Temple Sinai in Roslyn Heights to say goodbye to the gregarious soccer player who family members said made friends with everyone he met. Grumet died when the Lexus sedan he was driving ran into a tanker truck on Old Westbury Road in Roslyn Heights.

A few hours later, at 3 p.m., a wake will begin at Franklin Funeral Home in Franklin Square for Jessica Savarese, 14, the freshman from H. Frank Carey High School in Franklin Square, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing Hempstead Turnpike.

For the students in Franklin Square, the counselors and the grieving will be all too familiar; two other students from Carey High died in a car accident just three weeks ago while on their way to soccer practice.

So, for the second time in less than a month, Sewanhaka district Superintendent George Goldstein on Saturday morning began assembling as many as 50 professional clinicians for students and teachers to talk to about Savarese's death.

First thing this morning, the students will be directed to gather in specific areas on each floor of the school.

Like the students who gathered Saturday on Hempstead Turnpike to build a memorial in Savarese's honor, teachers at the school "are in shock," Goldstein said. "You see a child on a Friday afternoon, and she's jubilant and happy, and telling the other kids she was going to a sleepover. ... You don't expect to come back on Monday to this."

Students also will be encouraged to build a memorial to Savarese on the campus, Goldstein said.

In Roslyn Heights, more than 300 of Grumet's friends also gathered Saturday for a memorial at the site of the crash.

One of those who organized the event was Grumet's friend Ricky Gilbert, 16, of Old Westbury. Gilbert said he was surprised by the massive turnout, considering they arranged the memorial in just a few hours. But then again, he said, Grumet "knew everyone, everywhere. ... He loved everyone" and made an effort to get to know each person who crossed his path.

Even a taxi driver he had befriended during occasional rides he took before he got his license was moved enough to come, Gilbert said.

Yesterday, Grumet's parents were visited by dozens of their son's friends from his many social circles: his school, his two soccer teams, his friends from a summer camp in the Berkshires and others.

"My son had a very special gift," said his father, Marc Grumet. "He looked at you, he smiled, he said hello, and he listened. He ate up life."

"He didn't enjoy every day," said his mother, Virginia Grumet. "He enjoyed every second."

Counselors also will be available at the Wheatley School, said Susan Bergtraum, the president of school board of the East Williston school district.

Visiting hours for Savarese will be from 3 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. today, and a funeral Mass will be held tomorrow at 11:15 a.m. at St. Catherine of Sienna Roman Catholic Church in Franklin Square.