‘You’re not walking alone’

For 27 years, longtime Rockville Centre residents Elaine and Joe Stillwell have spent the second Friday of every month at Molloy College, helping parents cope with the worst grief imaginable: the death of a child.

It was a situation in which the Stillwells found themselves in the summer of 1986, when Elaine’s son from a previous marriage, Denis O’Connor, drove through a barricade and hit the raised Point Lookout drawbridge. His sister, Margaret O’Connor, who was a passenger, died in the accident. Denis died in the hospital a few days later.

Elaine was overcome with grief at the loss of two of her three children. “We didn’t know anyone that had survived the loss of a child,” she said. “There were no groups meeting at that time. I got the six books they had in the library about someone who died. I read every one of them, and every one of them mentioned The Compassionate Friends. I had never heard of them. I wrote and asked if we could start a group here.”

The Compassionate Friends is a nationwide organization that gives parents the support they need as they deal with the death of a child.

Instead of just grieving, Elaine and Joe decided to do something positive. On Oct. 9, 1987, they held their first Compassionate Friends meeting, at Molloy.

“When Molloy asked us how many people we expected, we said 10 or 15,” Elaine recalled. “We were naïve. The first time we had 36. The next month was 50, then 75.”

“They come from all over,” she added. “Merrick, Bellmore, Massapequa, Brooklyn. Some were driving in from Shirley. I’m amazed at what people do. But they found a home.”

Over the years, the Rockville Centre chapter of The Compassionate Friends has grown to be the largest in the organization. An average of 60 people attend its monthly meetings, and the Stillwells are still running things.

“When we started this, we didn’t think we’d be doing it 27 years later,” Elaine said. “But you can’t walk away from it.”