Parents, Members Of Billerica's Class Of 1994 Want Their Memorial Back
BILLERICA (CBS) - "The last memories that we have of them were as students at the high school. They belong there," Jennifer Rao, said.
Jennifer Rao is from the Billerica Memorial High School Class of 1994.
A class that dealt with an unimaginable amount of loss.
Between 1993 and 1994, 17-year-old Carrie Keyes, 16-year-old Jeff Dunakin, 18-year-old Amy Ward and 15-year-old Chris Eastman, all passed away.
Jennifer, still remembers sitting next to Carrie Keyes in class and losing her just before the junior prom.
"We used to write messages to each other on the table, and it took a very long time to be able to go back and sit at that seat without her next to me, and it's very hard for me to visit her grave, so visiting the trees and the memorial that was set up at the school is a little bit easier," she explained.
Two more teens, 18-year-old Verity Colon and 16-year-old Ami Jones, were also honored in the memorial.
Five of the six teens passed away after car accidents, another in a skiing accident.
While a tree still stands for each of the six students, one father went to visit the memorial around Christmas only to realize the plaques were gone.
Jeff Dunakin's brother, Robert, says Jeff had just gotten his license and remembers how he woke up after the accident.
"He was even funny in the hospital, in the hospital bed. Caring about whether his mom was upset, his dad, his brothers, his family, his girlfriend. He was like, 'I'm going to make it through.' That's the kind of person he was. He was much more focused on everyone else than himself," Dunakin remembered.
Even though Jeff passed away several days later, he says he lived life in such a way, it's almost as if he knew.
"It's almost like he knew... he was... he is — because he's still there... someone who brought life to everywhere he went," Dunakin said.
As hard as it was to go through, he chooses to remember the best of Jeff.
"We try to skip past that and try to remember him bursting open the doors while you're hanging out with your friends and singing a song just to amuse them ... just to get a bit of a rise out of them because they all loved him. My friends loved him," he added.
Now, his family is one of several left wondering why the memorial is being removed.
They thought it was due to the construction of the new high school but have since learned the memorial may be gone for good.
"It didn't strike us as something that would happen to a memorial... or that you wouldn't notify the people who have been in town since the events took place," he said.
As a part of the class that made the memorial, Rao can't understand why these memories aren't being honored.
"It's being steamrolled for nothing, for no apparent reason. We have absolutely no blueprint to show that some important new part of the school is going to be there on these grounds. It looks like it's still going to be a parking lot," she explained.
"If it bothers you can walk by. It is not OK to take these memorials away from someone who does want to visit them," she added.
WBZ-TV reached out to Billerica's Superintendent of Schools, but no statement has been released.
