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Farewell to 'Smiling Kate'

Long Beach community joins family in saying goodbye to girl, 7, killed in car crash

BY THERESA VARGAS AND HILARY RUSS | STAFF WRITERS

July 17, 2005

David Moscolo, far right, with other mourners carry the casket of Katie Flynn out of St.Ignatius Martyr Church during the funeral on Saturday, July 16, 2005 in Long Beach, New York. (PHOTO BY HOWARD SCHNAPP)

In a picture Katie Flynn drew of Long Beach, bright yellow sand meets a blue, crayon-streaked ocean. Both the sun and a fish are smiling.

It is the Long Beach Katie Flynn knew.

Yesterday, the Long Beach that knew her, or felt as if it did in the weeks since the 7-year-old was killed by an alleged drunken driver, showed up to say goodbye.

"I wonder what she would have been," if she'd grown up, said Kathy Nadal. "She was maybe too good for this world."

Nadal, who used to baby-sit Katie's mom, Jennifer Flynn, was one of more than a thousand mourners to shuffle into St. Ignatius Martyr church in Long Beach. Katie made her first Communion there two months earlier.

Yesterday, as bagpipes moaned, her small coffin was carried in amid family members, a few whose bodies were still broken from the crash.

Instant connection

On crutches, her father, Neil, stood in front of the church and told how his first-born daughter changed his concept of family and children. He hadn't liked kids much and wasn't sure if he wanted his own, he said, when Katie was born.

"There I was in the nursery and that nurse handed me that baby. I looked down and she looked up," he said. "I looked around to see if anybody heard the light switch."

Three more children came after her. But Katie was his "little cup of sunshine," he said, a little girl whose "tremendous belly laugh was completely disproportionate to her size" and whom he nicknamed "Smiling Kate Flynn," even though it sounded like a boxer.

Neil Flynn was in the car with Katie, her mother and her grandparents, coming home from a wedding when their limousine was struck head-on by a driver going the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway earlier this month.

Police say the driver, Martin Heidgen, had a blood-alcohol level that was three times the state's legal limit of 0.08. He is charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

"I'll let someone else say it's a time for forgiveness. And I will respectfully disagree with anyone who says something good came of this," Neil Flynn said.

Memories of Katie

Instead, he asked that people remember Katie as he did: a child who spoke with ease to adults, a good big sister who once shared so much ice cream with her younger sister and brothers that there was little left for her.

"Just think about my friend Smiling Kate Flynn and let her make you feel better like she made me feel better," Neil Flynn said, choking on tears. "I love you sweet Katie pie, I love you so much. And I'll never stop."

Family and friends sobbed in the front rows. Crumpled tissues littered the pews when they stood for a prayer.

There was little consolation yesterday. Rev. Chuck Romano urged mourners to resist asking, "Why her? Why this way?"

"This tragedy does not, and will not, make sense," he said.

The limo driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, was also killed in the collision. He was buried July 3. Katie's grandparents, Denise and Chris Tangney, attended in wheelchairs.

Family ties

Yesterday in the church, there were so many people that they overflowed from the pews into the aisles. Almost everyone had a connection to the family.

Katie Alton, 14, helped baby-sit Katie a few weeks back. They played school, she said, and Katie was the assistant teacher.

"She wasn't shy at all," Alton said.

Many remembered Katie for how she was around children younger than her, including her three siblings.

When Lizette DiResta's baby-sitter, Amanda, was sometimes late picking up her daughter, Olivia, from dance school, Katie had already taken charge.

"Katie would say, 'Don't worry Amanda, I've taken good care of Olivia,'" said DiResta, 36. "She was a little mother hen."

All the children at Katie's school, following their parents' outpouring of support to the Flynn and Tangney families, keep asking what they can do that will be special for Katie, DiResta said.

"They're like the adults," she said. "They all want to do something."