One University of Richmond student and one recent alumna were killed in a car accident Thursday morning in Roosevelt, N.Y.
The students, Paige Malone, 19, a rising junior, and Jamie Malone, 22, who graduated in May, were two of three people killed in the single vehicle accident on the Meadowbrook Parkway. They were on their way to work as counselors at a camp for disabled children and adults.
Jamie Malone, left, and her sister, Paige Malone.
According to a report from 1010 Wins in New York, the car ran off of the road around 8:45 a.m. and hit a tree. Detectives are still investigating the cause of the crash, but alcohol was ruled out.
According to Newsday, the sisters were not wearing their seat belts when the crash occurred.
Both sisters were from Floral Park, N.Y. and had worked at the camp, Camp Anchor, for more than five years.
“What is heart wrenching is reading their files and seeing that each of them wrote about this camp in their admissions essays,” Westhampton College Dean Juliette Landphair said. “That, I think, gives you a sense of how both of these young women were pretty extraordinary in terms of what mattered to them.”
At Richmond, Jamie majored in sociology with a minor in elementary education and had secured a teaching job at Maybeury Elementary School in Henrico, Va., for the fall.
“When I think about [Jamie] in class, it makes me smile,” said Thelma Wheeler, director of field placement in the education department, who had Jamie in her class last semester. “She was very intelligent, but she didn’t flaunt it.
“She did an outstanding job with the 4th and 1st graders at Maybeury and her cooperating teachers very much admired who she was. She could make a lot of people smile but she also expected that you were doing what you were supposed to be doing. She was definitely not a slacker, academically or personally.”
Paige was an accounting major. The older Malone children, Terence and Daphne, also graduated from Richmond in 2006 and 2008 respectively.
Landphair said that the nature of Richmond’s close-knit campus community meant that the tragedy would impact all of the members of the university community.
“It takes your breath away,” Landphair said. “It displaces you because it just seems fundamentally unfair and wrong that somebody so young and vivacious is gone. Whenever we lose a student, it reverberates around campus.”
Both sisters were also members of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Chapter president Jeannie Neaylon sent an e-mail to the chapter members when she learned the news.
“To say that I am in shock and disbelief is an understatement,” Neaylon said in the e-mail. “There aren’t enough nice things to say about Jamie and Paige; they were unbelievably kind, loyal and generous people, and I simply can’t believe that I’m actually writing this.”
Paige joined the sorority as a sophomore and both sisters were active during sorority events, especially philanthropy.
“When anybody wanted to get something done, Jamie was always the name that came up, especially when it came to service,” associate director of student activities Alison Keller said.
Keller and Neaylon mentioned that the sorority brought the sisters even closer together.
“They were close in both senses,” one sorority sister said. “They had their biological sisterhood and they had their sorority sisterhood, and I think that the presence of both of them strengthened their relationship and everyone else in the sorority’s as well.”
In an e-mail to the university community, President Ed Ayers said: “The University community has lost two beloved members. … Both women were leaders in student life and active in community service.” Ayers, along with some other faculty and staff members, travelled to New York for the funeral service.
A memorial service was held for the girls at Our Lady of Victory Church in Floral Park on Thursday night. One attendee said that there were “a lot” of people in attendance and that not all of those at the service could fit inside the church.
Chaplain Kate O’Dwyer Randall said that grieving students were encouraged to visit or call the Chaplaincy.
“In a community like this, an event like this totally scrambles a student’s compass,” she said. “We don’t give quick answers. We don’t say ‘everything happens for a reason’ because that’s not relevant right now. It’s not helpful.”
The third person killed in the crash was Michael Mulhall, who was also 22. The two other 20-year old women in the car, one of whom was the driver, were treated for minor injuries, according to the Long Island Press. Michael’s cousin, Julianne Mulhall, is a rising senior at Richmond.
The funeral service for the Malones was held on July 19 at 9:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Victory in Floral Park. A prayer service was held at the same time on Monday on campus in the Cannon Memorial Chapel.
This story is being updated. Updates will be published as they are completed.
Contact staff writer Reilly Moore at reilly.moore@richmond.edu
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