Fiancé’s friends, family mourn Le
Fiancé’s friends, family mourn Le
Guests exit Temple Beth El in New York on Wednesday after a memorial service for Annie Le GRD ’13.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
HUNTINGTON, N.Y. — Ten days after what was supposed to be her wedding day and three days before her burial, Annie Le’s GRD ’13 memory lived again in the small Long Island community where her fiancé grew up.
In an hour-long memorial service filled with palpable sorrow yet punctuated by laughter, Jonathan Widawsky’s friends, family and synagogue community paid tribute to Le and prayed to recover from her loss. In the sanctuary of Temple Beth-El, traditional Hebrew prayers and songs alternated with eulogies from Le’s college friends and Widawsky’s mother and sister, often moving the audience of more than 200 — many of whom had never met Le — to tears.
“This is not easy for us,” said Widawsky’s younger sister Lauren, a senior at Towson University in Maryland. “This was not the plan.”
Addressing a congregation that included a group of Columbia students, a contingent of Yale faculty members and administrators — among them University Secretary and Vice President Linda Lorimer — and local residents, Lauren Widawsky spoke gratefully of Le’s eagerness to “take her on” as a sister, their shared shopping trips and their conversations. In the midst of an otherwise somber eulogy she struggled to finish, she joked that she knew Le and her brother would have a happy marriage when Le allowed Widawsky to give her a haircut.
“What girl would let Jon cut her hair?” she said to widespread laughter.
Though Widawsky, pale and grave in a dark suit, did not speak, his friends told the story of how he and Le met as freshmen at Rochester University, became friends and fell in love.
Their longtime friend Matthew Bonyak remembered Le striking up a conversation with Widawsky — now a graduate student at Columbia — in the lounge of their freshman-year dormitory. With a laptop and notebooks strewn all about her, he said, she impressed Widawsky and Bonyak with her energy and friendliness.
“She was simultaneously studying, shopping and talking to us,” Bonyak said of their first meeting. “And at the end of the night, she kissed us on our foreheads.”
Calling Le “a mouse that roared,” Bonyak described a spunky, driven young woman with a high-pitched voice, a penchant for shoes and an unending affection for all her friends. She constantly worried for everyone she knew but herself, he told the congregation.
In her later years at Rochester, Le would volunteer to proofread her friends’ resumes, personal statements and cover letters as they applied for internships and jobs, recalled Janice Lomibao, who was Le’s best friend and who would have been her maid of honor. Lomibao could not attend the service, but another friend read her remarks aloud.
“Those of us who knew Annie always looked up to her,” Lomibao said. “She would surprise you with candy or a pair of earrings you’d been eyeing for a long time.”
But Bonyak and Lomibao agreed that for all her love for her friends, Le was at her happiest when she was around her fiancé.
The two frequently described their relationship using a phrase from singer Jason Mraz’s song “Lucky” — “lucky I’m in love with my best friend,” Bonyak said.
Widawsky proposed to Le last July after a full day of the couple’s favorite activities, including a walk in the park, a “chocolate dinner” and going to the birthday party of another of their good friends, Bonyak recalled. The two had planned to honeymoon in Greece.
“Theirs was a love to be admired, that’s for sure,” he said.
In the months before they were to be married at the North Ritz Club in Syosset, N.Y., Widawsky began introducing his fiancée to the members of the tight-knit temple community in which he grew up. The Temple Beth-El and Huntington communities, where the Widawskys are known for their warmth and hospitality, were ready to welcome her, temple leaders said.
Though she said she had only spoken to Le a few times, temple cantor Sandra Sherry said she was convinced Widawsky had chosen his partner wisely. They were a young couple, she said, but a compatible pair, with “good values.”
And though Le will never join them for services, her name will be read at shabbat dinners as befits any member of the temple community, Rabbi Jeffrey Clopper told synagogue members.
Before asking the congregation to pause for a moment of silence, Clopper thanked the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the Yale, New Haven and state law enforcement officials who worked on Le’s case — a jarring reminder of Le’s gruesome murder in a service that otherwise centered on memories of Le, alive and happy.
“As anybody who knew her would tell you, there was only one Annie Le,” Bonyak said. “She was an experience, and experiences have to be shared.”
Comments
None 2 years, 8 months ago
Thank you for this beautiful article. I too cried while reading this.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
This is sooooooooo sad. I have no words to describe how I feel. I have been eading about this everyday. Death leaves a heartache no one can heal Love leaves a memory no one can steal. I can't stop my tears.... May you rest in Peace Annie!
None 2 years, 8 months ago
A young life cut short. This is the world we live in and why it's important to express our love to everyone around us daily. God bless all families involved.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
I could not even imagine not getting to marry my best friend. Knowing that someone could have taken that joy away from me makes me just feel ill. Murder is for weak people. People who can not just walk away. You stole a beautiful person who could have solved a disease. I read these news reports and can not get past the fact that she was found on her wedding day. I feel so bad for that young man that lost his future wife. May God bless you and may He bring you peace in the messed up world. Thank you Lord for the blessings that you have given to me. I am greatful that you have kept me and my husband safe from harms way.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
This is so sad. I don't even know Anne Le personally but I've cried about her so many times. Especially when I see photos in the news of how happy she and her fiance were. What happened to her was so horrible... Whoever is guilty will have to pay for this!
None 2 years, 8 months ago
Thanks for sharing this. I can't help but let out a little cry for this girl every day. I'm a man and I have no problem admitting that. I've lost family members, due to age and illness, yet I have never felt this level of pain. Annie did not deserve this at all and it makes no sense on so many levels. I'm putting aside my faith for a while, for I no longer understand the purpose of it all and the "greater plan". Perhaps sometime I will return to God, for without Him I surrender all hopes that somewhere, she lives on. But for the moment, I can't help but feel betrayed.
Annie, we love you, and you will never be forgotten.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
Heartbroken: I am much like you, bearing a mixture of utter grief and outrage. Like you I've experienced the loss of loved ones, and personally know people who have suffered terrible tragedy - but nothing like this.
I am also a cancer survivor - at least for the present, wondering what Annie may have done for the world had she survived. So I live from day to day. I may live 10 years or 20, or maybe far far less. Radiation therapy sometimes births new cancers in coming years.
I write when I'm stressed/troubled and need to relax, when I fear for tomorrow, and sometimes just to laugh.
I made a comment in the thread "News' View: Our lost classmate", including a poem. I have other variants of it. Read it if you wish, it helped my pain somewhat.
You want to remember Annie? She and Jonathan wanted people to contribute to the "I have a dream" foundation. I did, and will for many years in remembrance of her.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
My heartfelt condolences to Annie Le's family and those who knew & loved her, especially her fiance, Jonathan. From what I've read about her, Annie worked really hard in HS and at UR, and spent countless hours writing scholarship applications, so she could follow her dream, first discovered as a teenager while volunteering in a hospital pathology lab. It seems to me that the two best ways to honor Annie's memory might be (1) to promise yourself that you will work hard enough to make a dream come true yourself that will help others: study hard, and GRADUATE; maybe train for and compete in a road-race for a good cause, etc., and (2)Have a talk with the really good people in your life who aren't aware of those who are "trouble". If your personal radar tells you to avoid someone, or to keep interactions to an impersonal, polite minimum, warn those who don't see the "signals" to also be polite but distant, and to NEVER be alone with that person. Again, I send sincere wishes of comfort to those mourning Annie Le.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
To "heartbroken too" #10--Thanks for putting into succinct, eloquent phrases why one can hold onto faith through tests of it such as this. Your words are of great comfort at a time like this. Thank you.
None 2 years, 8 months ago
I feel the same way. I've never even know Annie, but I read about this everyday and cry because I see how happy she was with her fiance and now that is all gone. I can't imagine the pain they are going through and how badly it hurts for him to live without her and having the timing be so terrible through all this.
I cry because I can't imagine how he feels and how I can never make this person/people feel better.
More so when I read that he was wearing his wedding ring. I know it's none of our business, but I hope they bury her with her wedding ring. :(
None 2 years, 8 months ago
to "heartbroken," of course this horrendous event doesn't make any sense at all and it would be incredibly cruel to say that there is some "greater plan" in this devastating loss of such a beautiful person. but i don't think that this is a reason to walk away from God...the God that i believe in is not far away up the sky letting this happen for a greater plan. rather he is weeping with the family, weeping for the loss of a life he created and loved, weeping at the evil of this world. a loving God allows intense suffering, but not because he wants it that way- because he let humans choose their paths and we chose evil. there is no greater purpose in this. but God is still here. i pray for a divine peace and comfort to surround annie's family and fiance.
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