St. Bernadette School students begin to disperse following a prayer service at which a memorial garden honoring the late Kevin Healey was blessed Friday. (West Life photo by Kevin Kelley)

St. Bernadette dedicates memorial to teacher’s late son
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published May 12, 2010

It didn’t take Kevin Healey long to make a mark on the world, or at St. Bernadette School.

Healey never attended St. Bernadette. Nevertheless, the school now has a service club and now a memorial garden named after the Fairview Park native, who died last April at the age of 20 after a two-year battle against bone cancer.

Kevin was diagnosed during his senior year at St. Ignatius High School, where his father, Tom, is a longtime theology teacher. In spite of his diagnosis, Kevin enrolled in classes at the University of Notre Dame even while receiving periodic chemotherapy treatments at the Cleveland Clinic.

Following his death, students at St. Bernadette School, where Kevin’s mother, Ann, is a kindergarten teacher, decided to form a service club in his memory.

Ann Healey said that’s a very appropriate way to remember her son.

“He definitely did live a life of service,” she said.

As a high school student, he was active in one service group that assisted the homeless and another that provided pallbearer service to indigent persons and those from small families.

Kevin’s Krew, as the service club is called, includes all grades at the Westlake Catholic grade school. Earlier this year, students raised money to support the Holy Cross religious order’s missionary work in Haiti following the earthquake there. Kevin’s dorm hall at Notre Dame had been supportive of the order’s missionary efforts.

Kevin’s Krew had previously purchased a truckload of school supplies for inner city parishes and schools.

Ann said she has even bigger plans for the service club.

“I figure if this has Kevin’s name on it, we won’t do dinky stuff,” she said.

Last year’s kindergarten class at St. Bernadette collected money to plant a tree in Kevin’s memory. The class of 2009 raised money to purchase a memorial stone.

On Friday, the Rev. Thomas Weber, pastor of St. Bernadette, said a blessing over the Kevin Healey Memorial Garden during a brief prayer service in the school courtyard.

The memorial stone includes a quote from Healey's journal. (West Life photo by Kevin Kelley)

The memorial stone includes a quote from a journal Kevin apparently started once doctors told him there was no longer hope he would be cured. His parents discovered the journal following Kevin’s death.

“We didn’t even know this journal existed,” Ann said.

The journal, Ann said, gave her and Tom solace that their son was close to God prior to his death. Weber told them some of the entries sounded like they had been written by a saint or a mystic.

The courage and positive attitude Kevin showed during his illness continues to have an impact at the Notre Dame campus, Ann said.

“Even at Notre Dame, which is a place of legends, it was quite a story,” she said, adding her son was the first student to even enter the college having been diagnosed with cancer.

Ann said she’s very proud her school has the memorial garden where students can reflect for generations to come.

During Kevin’s illness, the family posted a blog to keep friends updated on his progress. Ann, who wrote the majority of the blog posts, said she is considering writing a book about Kevin’s battle with cancer based on the blog.

“I want to keep his memory alive by being his voice,” she said.

On the Web:

• Kevin Healey website