Bullying Curriculum Helps Family Mourn Loss of Son

Jean Carroll originally didn’t plan on going to her son’s memorial service out of fear that no one else would.

But she mustered the courage, went with her family, and waited as folks began to trickle down to Gibbs Pond Park in Smithtown.

It was only a short while before that her 17-year-old son Justin committed suicide, stripping the Carroll family of their sanity as they grieved for their loved one.

Friends and acquaintances began to bring letters and notes, putting them in a box, and Jean went home with the bin to read.

Letter after letter dispelled the horrid truths of Justin’s quiet, yet striking journey of bullying at Smithtown East High School. The catch? He never said a word to anyone about this.

Then the verbal communication between past onlookers to Justin’s abuse and his parents began.

“Weeks later people told us he used to get beat up on the bus,” his mother said, “but he never came home and told us. I read the letters and they said, ‘I’m sorry I beat you up, I’m sorry I made fun of you.’ I guess the kids were writing to say they were sorry to him in Heaven.”

For the most part there were no red flags for the Carroll family to grab – Justin always had a smile and was gracious at all times. Though his dad John said he often slept a lot and appeared depressed, he wasn’t any different than a normal teen. Two months prior to his death in June 2009, Justin wrote a paper about suicide for his psychology class, expressing a dislike for the act based on his research.

“He was always smiling,” Jean said. “That was his way of coping.”

An Eagle Scout, he was like most teens, just getting by and living his life. He smiled, he was kind and like most suicide victims, wasn’t someone you’d expect to take his or her own life.

When she lost Justin, Jean felt people were judging the family. “‘What are they going to do now?’” she said. “I felt people were looking at me all the time.”

She works as a teacher in New York City and one of her co-workers said the ingredient to moving on, something to trigger a positive reaction to their tragedy, would one day come.

It came in the form of the book “How Full is Your Bucket,” for kids, by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer.

She showed her son Jay, now a senior at Smithtown East, and he ran with it. What was a critically acclaimed piece of child literature about bullying quickly became a way for the Carroll family to heal and for Smithtown elementary students to learn about the hazards of bullying.

Jay created a lesson plan, which consisted of positive character reinforcement and shows the negative effects of harmful words. He gathered acceptance from the Smithtown School District’s administrative body after many hours of research and curriculum development.

The program allows the students to learn the act of being kind to each other as opposed to talking negatively to others and the bucket remains in the classroom, becoming an active part of ongoing classroom instruction for the remainder of the school year. Teachers have constantly referred back to the lessons learned in the lecture and allowing the children to demonstrate the positive aspects of treating each other respectfully and friendly.

“I was happy so many people supported us and got involved with it,” Jean said. “It helped me heal a little bit. When they spread the good word, maybe some kids might not have a bad day that Justin had.”

Jay wanted to spread the message to others more effectively, so he gathered some friends at both Smithtown East and West, including Ryan Mahoney, and formed a taskforce, with students like Steven Tarquinio, meant to carry on his charitable legacy for years to come.

“It’s awesome to turn such a bad situation into a positive,” said Jay, who won the Suffolk County Exceptional Senior Award from the county volleyball coaches association thanks to his efforts. “They had a good grasp on the message we conveyed.”

“It feels so good making a difference in the community,” added Tarquinio, 15, a sophomore at Smithtown East. “It goes even bigger than the community, the kids will learn and tell their friends. It’s making a difference in children’s lives.”

Tarquinio’s father Glenn, a Suffolk County Police Officer, started the Cops Who Care foundation in 2007 and is also involved with the bucket program in Smithtown.

“It’s usually the beginning of a negative spiral,” he said. “You see families start to fall apart and to see what’s grown from this and where it’s still growing is amazing.”

Right now the program is geared towards third grade students in Smithtown because district administrators and workers agreed that’s an age where the program could be most affective.

“The book itself is widely used with elementary school children to illustrate that we have to be careful with how we treat other people,” said Mary Cahill, Smithtown’s Assistant Superintendent for Instruction and Administration. “Principals and teachers seem to be thrilled with the follow up. They seem to get a great deal out of the presentation. It fits perfect with our efforts of social and emotional development of our children. They might be helping untold numbers of kids right now. It’s the gift that all these kids will find themselves in better situations because they’re doing this.”

The Carroll family may have lost Justin, but his death is helping brighten the lives of many young children in Smithtown while assuring that Justin's memory always remains alive.