Three hours before Britney Gengel died in the massive earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti two years ago, she sent her family a text message expressing pure affection for the children she had met that morning while doing humanitarian work.
“They love us so much and everyone is so happy,” she wrote. “They love what they have and they work so hard to get nowhere, yet they are all so appreciative. I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.”
Later that January day, Gengel lay trapped under the wreckage of a hillside hotel that had collapsed. Rescuers pulled at least 68 bodies, including Gengel’s, out of the ruins. With her last text message in mind, Gengel’s family is now making it their mission to carry out her dream and aid children in this devastated island nation. Father Leonard Gengel and his 19-year-old son Bernie are following in Britney’s footsteps and spending the Christmas holiday here to finish building an elaborate orphanage on the country’s western coast. The trip is Leonard Gengel’s 20th this year.
“My wife and I will wrap our arms around that text message for the rest of our lives,” Gengel said from the passenger seat of a maroon Mitsubishi taking him to the construction site. “The text message still resonates with us.”
The center they have in mind is a memorial of sorts, a brick-and-mortar homage to not just Britney but also the dozens who perished at the Hotel Montana, which was known for its sweeping vista of the capital of Port-au-Prince.The Haitian government estimates more than 300,000 people died in the Western Hemisphere’s worst modern natural disaster. Britney Gengel’s death brought home the catastrophe to her family more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) away in Rutland, Massachusetts.
She was a 19-year-old sophomore at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, when she found her calling. The communications major had come to Haiti to hand out meals to children for Food for the Poor, a religious charity based in Coconut Creek, a Fort Lauderdale suburb.
“She fell in love with the children,” said Leonard Gengel, a 51-year-old home builder. “She was consumed by what she saw and felt.”
Just hours before the magnitude-7 earthquake hit, Britney sent the text message to her mother, Cherylann. The last photo of Britney, taken on the day she died, shows her surrounded by a group of pigtailed girls in crisp, blue uniforms. At first, school officials told the family that Britney had gone missing. Later they said she was on a Florida-bound helicopter. Elated and relieved, the Gengels made their way to Fort Lauderdale to reunite with her. They learned there that she wouldn’t be coming. School officials had received wrong information.
“It’s unfathomable for a parent to lose a child twice in 36 hours,” Gengel, his voice choked up, said as the car neared Grand Goave, the coastal town Britney had planned to visit before she died.
Gengel showed up in Haiti 10 days later to recover his daughter’s remains, which wouldn’t be found until Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. She would be the last of the six Lynn University students and professors who died to be located.
She was buried in Worcester, Massachusetts, outside the family home in Rutland. ( Continue Reading Here)
