Special day at Stadium for quake refugees

Derek Jeter was 20 yards away taking batting practice. Joe Girardi was signing autographs in the dugout. And Nick Swisher had just stopped by to give a high-five.

Jacquey Duplessis and his 13-year-old son, Junior, sat in the Yankees dugout before Wednesday's game against the Mariners taking it all in. It was a special day for the father and son, who along with nine other students from Saints Joaquim and Anne School in Queens. But, to tell the truth, any day the two can be together is a special one.

For three weeks in January 2010, Duplessis did not know whether his son was dead or alive. Junior was living in Haiti during the devastating 2010 earthquake as were the rest of the students being hosted Wednesday as part of the Yankees' Hope Week.

"I was so sick not knowing that I couldn't even eat," said Duplessis, a plumber who lives in Queens and works for the MTA.

Junior, who had been living with cousins, ran out of the family home in Port-au-Prince minutes before it collapsed. For weeks he lived in the streets, sleeping on a plastic tarp, as it was too dangerous to enter any building. Finally, after a cousin was able to get a call through to his father, Junior moved to a suburb until his father was able to arrange for him to be airlifted out and join him in New York.

"He saw things no one should have to see," his father said.

Still, he was more fortunate than some of his classmates, a couple of whom lost parents and siblings in the earthquake. The Roman Catholic elementary school is located in Queens Village, the hub of the city's Haitian community. Some 80 percent of the school is Haitian, including 15 students like Junior who were refugees from the earthquake

"Nearly every student at our school lost someone," school principal Linda Frebessaid.

The 10 students, ages 7 to 13, who were honored by the Yankees are all refugees from the earthquake. Many did not speak English when they arrived in the United States, and a few were so traumatized, said Freebes, that they did not speak at all. Now, according the Rev. Jean-Moise Delva, who serves the mostly Haitian parish, many are learning "how to be kids again."

On Wednesday, the kids got to spend the kind of day most Yankees fans could only dream about. The group had been told that they were going on a field trip to a library in the Bronx. Instead, they arrived several hours before the game to meet the players and watch batting practice.

After watching the game from seats behind first base, they boarded a double-decker bus with Yankees players Jorge Posada, Freddy Garcia, Bartolo Colon and CC Sabathia and coaches Mike Harkey and Tony Pena. The bus took the kids on a tour of the city, which included stops at the United Nations, the Empire State Building for the lighting, dinner at Famous Famiglia Pizza and then St. Patrick's Cathedral, where they had dessert with Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

"We're going to have a lot of fun," Sabathia told the group of awestruck students as the schedule for the day was announced.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Boute, who threw out the first pitch, said he never dreamed he would be spending the day at Yankee Stadium. Said Boute: "It's much better than a trip to the library."