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East Bay High School Dealt Lessons In Loss

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By DONNA KOEHN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 8, 2008

GIBSONTON - Each year, the National Honor Society at East Bay High School chooses a charity to support with carwashes and other fundraisers.

This year, members realized it was East Bay itself that needed their compassion.

In September, as school was getting under way, the honor society lost one of its own, a whip-smart kid named Brent Bennett, 18, class of '07. He died of natural causes while barely into his first semester at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

To honor him, the honor society decided to build a memorial garden behind the school.

At Bennett's funeral, the school's chorus performed a song. Its lyrics: "Set me as a seal upon your heart ... for love is strong as death."

The choice was especially poignant because Bennett had sung it with the choir while at East Bay.

Eight months later, as the school year was winding down, East Bay students, faculty and parents again came together, overflowing from a large tent at Vance V. Vogel Park in Gibsonton.

This time, "Freebird" rocked over the speakers, while sweat and tears mingled in the 90-degree heat. Solemn football players carried long-stemmed roses of red, the school color.

In an impossibly tragic bookend to Bennett's service, this memorial was dedicated to the beloved quarterback of the East Bay Indians, senior Rex "Scooter" Ballenger, 18. He died two days after his car struck the back of a tractor-trailer on a bright Saturday morning in May. News of the accident spread at the school's final performance of "The Sound of Music" that night.

Adult speakers at the memorial hammered oft-repeated themes to the captive teenage crowd: You must make good choices. You must wear your seat belts. You aren't invincible.

By then, students didn't need convincing.

Good Kids

As long as teenagers have traversed that Neverland between childhood and the adult world, bad things have happened to them. Teen tragedy is the stuff of '60s pop songs, cautionary campfire tales, slasher films.

Almost everyone can remember a boy or girl who didn't make it, the name that doesn't show up on the roster at class reunions.

But for students at East Bay, high school has seemed randomly cruel.

The first tragedy occurred the year before, when freshman Fredrick Gardner, 15, died while riding his bicycle to school along bucolic Bullfrog Creek Road. The driver of the pickup that struck him was a 16-year-old student.

More tragedies followed in 2007-08.

Three days after the school's homecoming dance in October, cell phones lit up with news of the death of Samantha Parslow, 18, another 2007 graduate. Remembered for her zany Crayola costume during Spirit Week, Parslow died an accidental death, ultimately of heart failure, the coroner ruled.

Three days after that, students learned of a fatal car wreck involving two former classmates still well-known on campus. Rachel Morris, 20, of Riverview, was riding with her friend Brittany Romer, when Romer's convertible veered off the road, hit a mailbox and sailed into the air. Morris died.

In February, facing a charge of vehicular homicide and the despair over her friend's death, Romer, 21, of Gibsonton, committed suicide.

In December, East Bay students Jessica Davis and Gregory Powell, both 16, were shot near a bus stop in the Carriage Pointe subdivision in Gibsonton. Both survived. A 19-year-old, an East Bay ninth-grader and his 17-year-old brother, a former student, were charged with two counts each of attempted first-degree murder.

In April, an East Bay senior, 18, was raped and severely beaten while dropping off books at the Bloomingdale Public Library. The teen, known for her sense of fun and love of the beach, remains in an induced coma at Tampa General Hospital. A 16-year-old Bloomingdale High student was charged in the attack.

"Everything that happened, happened to good kids who didn't deserve it," says Shaylynn Murray, 18, a recent graduate. "It's our senior year - it's not the same, knowing that some of us aren't going to be there."

Her friend Heather McCubbins, 17, says she has had trouble comprehending it.

"Rex's desk will just be empty, always," she says. "He's just not going to be there."

Fernando Jaramuzchett's social networking Facebook page includes pictures of Bennett.

"Most of us are allowed to do what we want and we go crazy," says the former student, 19. "I know that's what I did. My parents didn't ask where I was half the time, and then you feel like you can do whatever and nothing will happen.

"But everything that has happened showed me it can. I know many people at East Bay are straightening up their acts."

Tough Reputation

Founded 50 years ago, East Bay High sits down the road from the giant smokestacks of Tampa Electric's Big Bend Power Station off Interstate 75 in Gibsonton. First housed at the site of what is now Eisenhower Middle School, a new school was built in 1972 in the institutional style of that time. It's not a beautiful place.

Its students are an eclectic mix hailing from towns such as tony Apollo Beach, tomato-farming Ruskin, blue-collar Wimauma, and Gibsonton, also known as "Gibtown," the home of carnival workers and sideshow performers.

Its best-known alumni are Willa Ford, a former Playboy model who calls herself the "bad girl of pop," and Debra LaFave, a teacher charged with having sex with a middle school boy in a nationally publicized case.

Shelley Alfonso, vice president of the school's alumni association, is the daughter of a man who graduated in East Bay's first senior class. She graduated from the school in 1981, her daughter followed in 1999, and her son, Austin, will be a 10th-grader next year.

The school is special to her.

"We've always gotten a bad rap," she says. "I get tired of people badmouthing it."

Alfonso, a Realtor, sold homes in the posh MiraBay community in Apollo Beach and often had to explain to potential buyers that the school has strong points.

"People would say, 'Your schools are so bad,'" says Alfonso, who lives in MiraBay. "But when I see them now, I ask them what they think. They always admit it's a good school."

In 2006, before the opening of Lennard and Spoto high schools, some students at East Bay were distraught to learn they might be moved. Teachers met in the auditorium, desperately hoping none of them would be transferred. Parents complained and the boundaries were redrawn, leaving the school intact.

"We really do have a family here," says Lauriann Jones, language arts teacher and National Honor Society adviser.

Principal Sharon Morris says she has been impressed with the way the students, and particularly the seniors, have dealt with the year's events.

"The tragedies have united this class," she says. "Through their grief, they have clung to each other."

Teachers helped the students by allowing them to talk things through, she says, "with lots of water and tissues."

Jonathan Comer, a research fellow at Columbia University in the department of child psychiatry, has written extensively about how young people deal with trauma.

"Schools can really come together in a tragedy, and the school personnel need to listen and to validate," he says. "It's important to know that the majority of teenagers will endure remarkably well. It's usually the small number of teens with problems before the tragedy who will have trouble, even if they didn't know the victims."

Sad Tradition

Recent graduate Cassandra Holbrook, 16, of Wimauma helped other National Honor Society members plant greenery and pink flowers at the memorial garden in the spring.

"When you're in high school, you don't think things like these can happen to you," she says. "But it really puts things in perspective. You can't go through life waiting for things to happen. Life is short, even if you don't think it is."

"We aren't actually unbreakable," adds graduate Courtney Diggers, 17, of Ruskin.

In addition to Bennett's, space will be left on the plaque for additional name plates. This year, students learned - along with their lessons in world history and Advanced Placement biology - that there always will be more names.

"It will say, 'From the 2008 National Honor Society, to all the fallen Indians,'" says Stephanie Riscile, 17, of Apollo Beach, a recent graduate and club president.

Troy Gordon, class of '81, donated materials and landscaping. Jones hopes someone will provide an irrigation system to keep things green. The site previously was a sandy pit used as a dumping spot for candy wrappers and cigarette butts.

"The students are proud of it," Jones says. "Now all I have to do is pick out a dead leaf every once in a while.

"So many kids in high school are hurting. This will be a place they can come to sit and think, away from the sterile walls of school."

Jones and the other adults who love and helped nurture the young adults in the class of '08 hope the students won't be forever linked to the year's tragedies. They want them to remember, but move on.

Coaches at the memorial, teachers, their principal, their parents - all find much to praise in the way the students coped this year.

The garden is one example. Their grace is another.

Reporter Donna Koehn can be reached at (813) 259-8264 or dkoehn@tampatrib.com.

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