HARE BAY, N.L. — Lorelei Collins wanted to be a nurse, and upon graduation from high school, she left Hare Bay and headed to St. John’s with that goal in mind.
The 17-year-old was good in school and always quick to throw her hand up when people wanted volunteers. And she was said to be like a second mother to her 10-year-old brother.
Lorelei also was an asthmatic and a regular visitor to hospitals, something that influenced her decision to pursue a career in nursing.
She would tell her mother she wanted to know what it was like at the other end of the needle she was so used to receiving.
“(Lorelei) was funny. She was always saying something funny,” said her mother Ruby Collins.
But she was only at Memorial University for a couple of days when she suffered an intense asthma attack and went into cardiac arrest.
Doctors told Ruby they worked hard on her daughter installing no less than three pacemakers in an attempt to revive Lorelei. But it didn’t work. They couldn’t save her.
It was Sept. 20, 1984 and she was two days shy of turning 18.
On what was supposed to be her birthday, Lorelei was instead in her casket wrapped in the long pale blue dress she had worn to her graduation earlier that year.
She was buried with her birthday cards.
“It will always be hard,” Ruby said. “You never get over the loss. Nothing is ever the same.”
Thirty-six years later, Lorelei’s memory is being preserved at a park in her hometown. She’s one of 48 sons and daughters of Hare Bay and Dover with their names on the black facing of a rock monument at Hare Bay Memorial Park.
There is an etching for Baby Mercer who died at birth, another for Maude Kathleen Collins, who died when she was just two-and-a-half years old and one for Donald Wilkins, who was but an infant when he died.
And Lorelei, who is the oldest of all who are honoured on the monument.
“I felt happy when I saw the memorial,” said Ruby. “Lorelei is etched in stone forever.
“I’m glad it is there.”
“We are very proud to get the memorial done, but it was very sad to see how many names we had to put on it." — Billie Keats
The monument, which located in a section of the Hare Bay playground, is expected to be the centrepiece of a larger memorial garden
Practically, but sadly, there is room for a few more names on the monument.
“Unfortunately, in our community, we’ve had a lot of deaths and children leave us way too soon,” said Billie Keats, a member of the Hare Bay Parks and Recreation Committee and one of those behind the movement to establish the memorial garden.
“I have a very personal connection. We lost our son a few years ago and his name is on the plaque.”
“A lot of our committee members have lost siblings or cousins, too. We’re all pretty invested to do this memorial.”
Her son Alexander James Keats was 13 when he died of complications from cerebral palsy in 2016.
Alexander loved to swim and ride his bike. He was a light for his friends and the community as a whole.
While non-verbal, he was said to have spoken with his eyes and was loved for it.
“It was very heartbreaking,” Keats said. “I always want him to be remembered.
“He had a very big impact on our community and the children. I’ve always tried to remember the goodness he brought to the community.”
Posted by Hare Bay Parks and Recreation on Friday, August 14, 2020
The effort to establish a monument started a year ago. When it finally was installed, it brought mixed emotions for Keats.
“We are very proud to get the memorial done, but it was very sad to see how many names we had to put on it,” she said.
Lorelei Collins spent much of her summers in the same park where her name will now live on forever,
As a Grade 12 student, she was a part of a crew that started to dig the hole that would be a community swimming pool.
Ruby recalls being worried about her daughter working under the hot summer sun, afraid she would experience an asthma attack.
When her mother would tell her this, Lorelei would just smile and say when they were done, Hare Bay would finally have a swimming pool.
“Nothing held her back,” said Ruby.
Nicholas Mercer is a local journalism initiative reporter for central Newfoundland for SaltWire Network.
