HUNDREDS ATTEND FUNERAL FOR NORWOOD HIGH STUDENT

Author(s):    Mac Daniel Globe Staff Date: September 16, 2004 Page: B2 Section: Metro/Region

DEDHAM - The youths grieving yesterday at the funeral of Allison Patricia White, the 14-year-old Norwood High School freshman killed by a car on her way to school last week, wore their sorrow on their sleeves, T-shirts, and arms.

Some friends and family wore White's favorite color , filling St. Luke's Evangelical Lutheran Church with pockets of pink. One boy wore a handmade T-shirt adorned with wings that read "Another angel in the sky." Some of White's soccer teammates wore their blue uniforms. Others wrote White's name on their arms next to the number 143, the teenage vernacular and instant-messaging abbreviation for "I love you."

For these teens, tenderly shifting from childhood to adulthood, such expressions were the only way to cope with a tragedy that has left a family, a school, and a community reeling.

"There are dangerous intersections everywhere, but now Allison is safe," the Rev. Walter Reuning told the approximately 300 people who attended the funeral, an hourlong Lutheran liturgy with no eulogy or family speakers. The crowd was too large for the sanctuary; extra seats were set up in back and side rooms.

A cadre of crossing guards, wearing white gloves and tri-cornered hats, lined the doorway to the church as White's coffin was carried out. Their presence was a reminder of the accident, as well as a wall of support for Cynthia L. White, Allison's mother, who was working as a crossing guard at another Norwood school at the time of the accident last Friday.

  Motorcyclists from the South Shore chapter of the Harley Owners Group, in their denim and leather jackets, also lent support to their fellow members, Cynthia and Richard White, Allison's father .

 

The accident occurred just two days into a new year of high school . White and two friends were walking to school after spending the night at a slumber party.

 

At Chapel Street, inside a marked crossing, White and Shawna O'Neil, 14, were hit by a car driven by Amanda Hayes, 32, of Norwood, a teacher at St. John the Evangelist School in Canton. O'Neil was injured. A third friend, Annmarie Davies, had trailed behind and was unhurt.

 

Hayes was charged with vehicular homicide, negligent driving, and failing to yield to pedestrians in a crossway. Her lawyer said after the accident that the sun had blinded Hayes.

 

The night of Hayes's arrest, investigators assigned to the Middlesex district attorney's office executed a search warrant and removed her computer from her home, part of an investigation into allegations of sexual impropriety by Hayes with a 14-year-old Weston boy , during which she sent him 40 to 50 explicit e-mails.

 

The parents of the boy have a restraining order against Hayes, who resigned from her Weston job as a teacher in July after being placed on administrative leave for an undisclosed reason.

 

Before the burial at Highland Cemetery in Norwood yesterday, four of White's friends changed into T-shirts bearing their lost friend's picture.

 

"We're just all trying to stay together," said Brittany Capers, 15.