When Othell Heaney’s son, Roger, died in a car accident in 1984, the mother of five couldn’t afford to wallow.

The Wilmington teacher had her four other children to worry about, as well as her preschool class of 3- to 5-year-olds who needed her.

A year later, the Heaneys, along with two friends, turned their grief into practice and started the Delaware chapter of Compassionate Friends, an organization that acts as a support group for people who have lost a child. The group helped the Heaneys process and deal with their loss.

And it was working. Othell and her husband, Bill, who met at DuPont and married in 1955, had picked themselves up and moved on as best as they could. But then two years later, the unthinkable happened.

The Heaney’s youngest child, 19-year-old Kevin, died by suicide.

For 20 years, the family thought their son was overcome with sadness at the loss of his brother. It wasn’t until two decades later that one of Kevin’s friends revealed the possible real reason: Kevin, along with a number of their friends, had been sexually abused by a local priest for almost a decade.

As devastating as that news was, it didn’t stop Othell and her family from remaining positive and pushing through their grief to help others.

All the while, she kept raising her three other children – Patrick, Carol, and Cathy.

Now, at the age of 87, Othell has become a champion for the Delaware community and a testament to what can be achieved in the wake of grief and tragedy. She still gives out her number freely to anyone who needs it, hoping to be an anchor to those floating in what feels like a sea of indescribable grief.

“I believe in humor, telling jokes and making people laugh,” she said. “Life is what you make of it. You have to work at it.”

Roger

Roger was her musician, the one who used to play guitar and was often having jam sessions with his friends in the basement.

On Nov. 22, 1984 – Thanksgiving Day – he was in a fatal car accident.

At a construction site near the Heaney home, some teens thought it would be funny to move the barricades into the middle of the road and see the confused reactions of people who would encounter it, according to News Journal archives.

What the pranksters didn’t anticipate was Roger swerving to miss the barricades, hitting a tree and dying.

He was only 21.

The Heaneys were devastated, but Othell wasn’t going to let her family fall into a pit of despair. Instead, the then-52-year-old woman dried her tears and continued to run her preschool and care for her family.

“They were all grieving, too,” Othell said. “I couldn’t add to them.”

Though Heaney had originally thought back in 1964 that she would go back to her job as a DuPont secretary, she decided instead to open up a preschool. For 42 years, she taught and cared for children out of her home before closing the preschool in 2005.

Those children, all students at Mrs. Heaney’s Plaskol, needed her, too.

Following Roger’s accident, Othell and the family believed they knew who the pranksters were – they suspected it was the two young boys who called in the accident.

But Othell said she didn’t want to press charges or get the boys in trouble because she was sure whoever caused the accident would have to live with that guilt for the rest of their lives. She felt that would be enough.

And she wanted more than anything for Roger’s life to carry forward.

Turning loss into life

As soon as Roger died, she and Bill wanted to donate his organs. At the time, the lieutenant governor was required to sign off on all organ donations and he was down in Dover.

Because of the delay, Roger’s organs weren’t able to go toward saving another life. Bill and Othell wanted to change that.

Though they were still grieving the loss of their son, the pair spoke on panels and advocated for a change in Delaware law so the lieutenant governor’s signature would no longer be needed to sign off on organ donation.

They succeeded. Today, that is no longer a requirement.

To cope with the sadness in her own heart and to pay homage to her son’s love of music, Othell decided to volunteer at the Grand Opera House.

She has been working with the Grand and The Playhouse theaters for over 30 years and remains the house manager at both, where she oversees over 200 volunteers.

‘There’s no magic wand’ 

When Othell lost Roger, families from around the state offered shoulders, prayers, and company as they all knew how it felt.

That outpouring is what prompted her to help found the Delaware chapter of Compassionate Friends, a national organization that helps people who have lost a child.

“I was in such pain and I heard this was a good group,” Othell said of the national organization that will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year.

“There’s no magic wand. We can’t take the pain away but we sure can give you ideas of how you can do it.”

Along with their friends Kate and Bob Commings, Othell and Bill were instrumental in getting the organization off the ground in 1985. The Heaneys were responsible for printing and distributing over 200 copies of the group’s monthly newsletter for decades.

“We weren’t as bad off as some parents are,” Bill said in a 1992 News Journal article about the group.

Othell and Bill helped to run the group up until December 2018 when Bill died. Though she’s no longer an official leader of the group, Othell still offers to help anyone who has lost a child.

Night or day, she says to call her.

Burying Kevin

The loss of Roger wasn’t the only time that the Heaneys found themselves leaning on The Compassionate Friends.

Kevin Heaney was just 19 when his mother found him dead by suicide in 1987.

Unlike with Roger, Kevin’s organs were all able to be donated.

Delawarean Theadousia Jenkins received Kevin’s heart and lungs, one of the first in the U.S. The first successful transplant procedure had only been achieved in 1981.

Almost 40 years later, Theadousia’s daughter Tonya still keeps in touch with Othell. Though her mother died some years later, Kevin’s organs helped Tonya have many more years with her than she otherwise would have.

But tragedy can come in waves, something Othell knows well. The next part of Kevin’s story came nearly 20 years later.

The Heaneys assumed that Kevin shot himself due to sadness from his brother’s death.

Then one Christmas morning in 2007, Othell got a call from a childhood friend of Kevin’s, Barry Lamb. He said he’d had something weighing on him for the last two decades and needed to come over.

Othell was perplexed but invited Kevin’s friend over. Then, Lamb revealed the real reason he believed Kevin killed himself.

Finding the truth

For years, Lamb told Othell, he, Kevin and a group of their friends had been sexually abused by a local priest.

In 2010, a lawsuit was filed against the priest accused of raping Kevin in a motel when he was about 11 years old. Lamb described a gruesome incident when multiple men would take turns raping young boys who attended St. Mary Magdalen church, including Kevin, according to News Journal archives.

He said that Rev. Edward Dudzinski of St. Mary Magdalen, in particular, was responsible for raping Kevin.

Lamb has been vocal since the 1980s about Dudzinski and even told his parents that Dudzinski sexually abused him, but his parents told the church instead, who suggested Lamb go to counseling and pressured the family to not get the police involved, according to News Journal archives.

Dudzinski could not be reached for comment for this story regarding the allegations.

Upon hearing the news about her son, Othell was angry and heartbroken.

“The first thing I did was stop going to church,” she said.

Bill was also distraught. He felt a sense of guilt.

Othell was brought up Southern Baptist in a big family, but Bill was an only child brought up Roman Catholic and pushed for their kids to go to Catholic school and a Catholic church.

Even more, they both felt bad about having let Dudzinski around their son. He had taken Kevin to baseball games and helped out with the local Boy Scout troop when Kevin was a preteen.

What’s worse is there had been rumors before all of this came to light. Othell remembers hearing whispers of inappropriate behavior from this particular priest when Kevin was young, but she brushed it aside because she never thought a priest could do something so horrendous.

She was wrong.

Making change

As she recalled her reaction, it was clear Othell had sat with her life experience and moved to a place of acceptance. The news behind her sons’ deaths no longer brought tears or stutters or down-turned glances.

Her eyes were clear and her voice was steady.

Part of that calm came from helping others that came after they learned of Kevin’s assault. Othell and Bill threw themselves into changing laws to help them get Kevin’s attackers to pay for their actions.

Bill was part of a small panel that worked to extend the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault. Othell remembers calling and talking to lawmakers until they got the ear of someone who would listen – and their efforts were successful.

In 2007, Senate Bill 29, known as the Child Victim’s Act, went into effect.

The bill “repeals the statute of limitations in civil suits relating to child sexual abuse cases and provides a two-year ‘window’ in which victims can bring a civil action in cases previously barred by the current statute.”

So from July 2007 to July 2009, anyone who had been sexually abused as a child could sue without the bounds previously imposed by the statute of limitations. This allowed about 150 people and families – including Lamb and the Heaneys – to sue the Catholic Dioceses in Wilmington.

The families won their civil lawsuit in 2011 and the Catholic church had to pay $77.4 million to all the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests like Dudzinski, according to News Journal archives.

Dudzinski himself could not be prosecuted because the criminal statute of limitations had passed, but he was removed from the ministry and ineligible to receive diocese pension and benefits, according to News Journal archives.

Humor solves a lot of life’s problems

After all these years, Othell is very open about telling her story. She talks about it with the members of Compassionate Friends locally and nationally, and she still leads seminars on grief.

In her north Wilmington home on Foulk Road, photos of her large family adorn the walls. One of three children, Heaney – along with her brother and sister – went on to have 13 kids in total. From her own children, Heaney wound up with 15 grandkids and 13 great-grandkids, with another soon on the way.

The longtime resident serves tea and biscuits to those who visit her, her white hair full and perfectly coiffed even on a Monday afternoon.

Despite what life has thrown at her, Othell remains the definition of a Southern belle even at the age of 87. It’s a testament to her childhood in Manchester, Georgia, a town of about 4,000 people who all knew each other.

In particular, she talks about the one thing that makes it easier to continue to live and work after losing two of her babies and her husband in 2018.

The answer? Humor, she said.

“Try to put humor in your life and work hard,” she says.