H.S. Scholarship Founded in Memory of Nazareth Alumnus

By Stefanie Gutierrez

On a mid-August morning, George K. Campbell’s parents received the phone call that every parent dreads. “George has been killed in a car accident,” the voice on the other end of the line said. He was 19.

George, a recent graduate of Nazareth Regional H.S., East Flatbush, was the young friendly face everyone knew as one of the ushers at the 11:15 a.m. Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church, Canarsie. A son, brother, and friend to everyone he met, George was tragically and suddenly taken away.

Yma Campbell-Allen, his older sister, recounts the morning of Aug. 19, 2006, as if it were yesterday. The night before, she slept restlessly.

George k. Campbell

“At about 7:15 in the morning, my phone rang and I jumped up. Before I could get to it, the call had already gone to voicemail,” she remembers.

As she listened to the message, it was her mother. “Yma, call me. George was killed last night.”

She frantically called her husband to come to the phone and tried to comprehend the news that had just been delivered. She wondered, “Who would want to hurt my baby brother?” Yma did not know that he had been killed in a car accident yet. She gasped for air.

As details emerged, she learned four people were in the car. George, who was known to “always sit in the front seat,” had given up his seat for his friend. He sat behind the driver as they made their way home, traveling on the Belt Pkwy. The car was speeding, and as the driver realized he had gone past the Pennsylvania Ave. exit ramp, he tried to maneuver onto it anyway. He lost control and hit a tree. George was killed instantly; the driver died hours later in a hospital emergency room. Two survived.

One of the survivors of the accident later told Yma that George had asked his friend “to slow down, he was driving too fast,” and then told those in the car, “I’m too young to die.”

Known for his sense of humor and joking around, the survivor did not think twice about what he had said. He thought George was only kidding around like he always did. Yet two months before his death, he had visited Yma at her home in South Carolina. Leaving church on a Sunday morning, he said to his sister, “I have a question I need to ask you… Are we going to know each other in the next life?”

“I thought he was clowning, like always,” Yma later said. “But then I assured him, ‘Yes, yes we will.’”
The memories of George have been an aid in her healing. After he died, she recalled a song he told her to listen to the last time they saw each other. The lyrics sang about life and loss and the importance of wanting to be with God after death. The title of the song was “Tell God When I Die… I Want to Live in the Sky.”

Two days after the accident that took George’s life, Yma and her parents, along with George’s godbrother Sean, visited the site of the crash.

“When we went to the tree, I took pictures of it. I saw a neck brace freshly wrapped that the paramedics brought but never used... The impact of the car had taken some of the bark of the tree off. I touched it,” Yma recalled. Her father made the sign of the cross at the tree.

In some ways, their visit brought some closure to their sudden loss.

And amid the tragedy that has surrounded George’s parents, Walter and Eunice, they have found comfort in their faith, their Church, and their recent decision to establish a scholarship in George’s honor, “to sustain his legacy and keep it alive,” Walter said.

They have experienced an outpouring of love and giving from many in the community and their parish. The scholarship has been set up for an eighth-grade student from the Holy Family parish through the diocesan Futures in Education Foundation. The recipient, Walter said, does not have to have straight-As.

“George was not a straight-A student,” he says with a smile. But his son had tremendous character and was always involved in the parish and the schools he attended.

“I want to be able to give to a child who can use a Catholic education. And I wanted to establish this scholarship every year to last forever,” he said.
When my father is long gone, Yma said, “He wants George’s name to live on forever. And what a great way to do that!”

The family has already received pledges of support from people who plan on giving to the scholarship fund for years to come.

They haven’t spent much time at the tree as much as in the beginning. Yet for Yma and her family, the tree symbolizes so many things. Although George’s life came to an abrupt end, it was also a beginning as he entered into eternity at the tree.

“To go to the tree only symbolizes pain; the pain of knowing that it all ended there,” Yma said. “George would want us to remember him for the lovable person he was. He would want us to embrace God even more now and prepare our hearts and souls for eternity.”

For information about giving the gift of an education in memory of a loved one, visit www.dioceseofbrooklyn.org/futures.

back to top