Friends help Loyola launch Parente award

Last week, Stephanie Parente's four college roommates were picking fancy dresses to wear to Saturday's Loyola University Bull and Oyster Roast. The formal affair is a networking tool for seniors and young alumni. And it's one of the events seniors look forward to all year.

Stephanie should have been with them.

In a few months, the tight-knit group of four young women - they called themselves "The Mates" - will don graduation gowns, collect their diplomas, and plan their futures without one of their own.

"I think about what I'd be doing with Steph every day," said her roommate, Stephanie Nguyen, known among friends as "Big Steph" to Parente's "Little Steph."

Tragic bond endures

It has been nearly two years since Parente's horrific death at the hands of her father, a Garden City attorney who killed both his daughters, his wife and then himself while on a weekend visit to Loyola. To this day, Stephanie's closest friends have remained roommates, bonded by the trauma of losing such a close friend so young and so violently.

As they plan divergent lives after leaving Loyola, a liberal arts college in Baltimore that last year took on university designation, the women say they want to leave behind a lasting memorial for Parente: an endowed scholarship.

They've persuaded the Loyola campus to launch the award in the names of Parente and another classmate, Evan Girardi, who died last September, as the school's 2011 senior class gift. With $50,000 as a goal, the students hope to create a small scholarship in perpetuity.

"We're hoping an incoming freshman who gets the scholarship will wonder who Steph Parente was and know that she was such an amazing and important person," said roommate Julianne Malley, 21, a double major in math and economics from Caldwell, N.J.

Parente's death, along with her mother, Betty, 58, and sister Catherine, 11, in a Baltimore-area hotel room shocked the Loyola campus. Authorities say William Parente, 59, killed his wife and daughters, laid them together on the hotel bed and then took his own life, cutting himself until he bled to death.

Relying on memories

The murders shocked the Loyola community and shattered expectations of college life for her roommates - Malley, Nguyen, Lauren Gallinari and Danielle Scoranni.

Instead of gearing up for finals, they were picking out Parente's funeral dress. It was left to them to gather her effects and clean out her room.

Malley remembers fighting back tears as she looked at Parente's empty bed.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to go through," she said of her friend's death.

They said good memories of Parente - known as a vivacious and friendly presence on campus - helped them pull through. They laughed at how all of her possessions were marked with her initials, as her mother had instructed. They pored over her Facebook page, watching videos and reading Parente's witty commentary. They held her jewelry close. They watched the Yankees that she loved to cheer.

And they accepted their unusual role as guardians of their friend's legacy.

"We were like sisters," said Gallinari, 21, an international-business major from Tuckahoe, N.Y. "We feel like it's natural for us to step up and take on this role."

They helped arrange for memorial Masses at the campus church. They had bracelets and T-shirts made bearing her name. And they kept doing things Parente loved: Scoranni still takes $5 cab rides to go to Chipotle restaurant, one of Parente's favorite spots.

"It's the little things here and there that remind us of her," said Scoranni, 21, a political-science major from Somers, N.Y.

Going separate ways

Last year was difficult, as the roommates split up to go abroad for their junior year: Malley to Ireland, Nguyen to China, Scoranni to Belgium and Gallinari to Italy. Parente had planned to go to Newcastle, England.

Nguyen said she almost canceled her trip to Beijing.

"I thought, 'How could I leave this place where I have all this support?'" said Nguyen, 21, an accounting major from upstate Wingdale, N.Y. "But I thought Steph would want us to go, kind of in her place, because she didn't get a chance."

Separated by thousands of miles, the four students remained in touch through Skype video chats and Facebook. There was no question they'd return to Loyola as roommates for their senior year, Gallinari said.

"We experienced such a traumatic event together," Gallinari said. "But it didn't hurt us, it made us stronger."

Their lasting memorial

Next month, fundraising will begin in earnest for the scholarship for Parente and Girardi, 20. A 38-member committee will begin discussing guidelines for the award's recipient.

The $50,000 fundraising objective is the highest-ever goal for a Loyola senior class gift, said school officials, who called the effort a testament to the character of the campus.

The scholarship would be a lasting public memorial for Parente after her roommates graduate.

Their post-college plans are still forming - only Nguyen has a job lined up. All that's certain, they said, is they will remain friends.

"Steph's death solidified that we know we're all there for each other," Gallinari said. "No matter what."