39 days ago
On a Friday night, which for teenagers is normally a night for high school football games, dances, and dates, ...several hundred of them were in church instead.
St. Gregory's Catholic Church on Maple Road in Amherst hosted a prayer service for six North Towns teenagers who died suddenly this week.
Four of the teens were killed in a car crash in Clarence, another was stabbed to death on a Buffalo street after attending a house party, and another succumbed to a sudden illness.
Each was memorialized by a single rose on an alter.
Each rose was yellow.
Yellow is the color symbolizing friendship.
"They're still in a shock and denial stage," said Eileen Warner,
the church's Director of Pastoral Ministry and a trained grief counselor.
"They really are at a point of disbelief. Many are wondering just how could this happen in their life and what does it mean for them," Warner told 2 on Your Side.
Warner said it was critical for the church to offer itself as a place of refuge, ... for when the reality sets in for many of the young people effected by the sudden deaths of their peers.
"A lot of them are gathering on the street corners to try to be together to memorialize this and ritualize it all, so we thought this was the time to open the doors to the young people and give them a place to be together, and let them know there's caring people there for them," Warner said.
And the church - which might be viewed by some as an old fashioned institution - knew just how to reach out to the young to invite them.
Chruch leaders created a Facebook page, to which 250 responded to say they were coming.
WGRZ-TV, wgrz.com
