[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 19, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2070-S2071]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                            SORROW TO SOLACE

 Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I decided that the Congressional 
Record should use the same heading, ``Sorrow To Solace,'' on what I am 
about to say to the Senate as the Raleigh (N.E.) News and Observer used 
on its heart-rending story on March 12 about Christelle Geisler.
  Who is Christelle Geisler? For openers, she is a charming student at 
Raleigh Meredith College whose home is in Hickory, NC, in the western 
part of my State. But that does not tell the real story about 
Christelle, so let me begin at the beginning of my brief relationship 
with her a few days ago.
  James Humes was waiting for me when I arrived at my Senate office in 
the Dirksen Building. In the hallway were a number of other visitors. 
James Humes is well known and highly respected in this city. He looks 
like Winston Churchill, he walks like Winston Churchill, he sounds like 
Winston Churchill. He served a stint as speech writer for a President 
of the United States; he is a well-known and highly respected author, 
his most recent book bearing the title, ``Eisenhower and Churchill,'' 
with a subtitle reading, ``The Partnership That Saved The World.''
  Jamie Humes and I met Christelle Geisler at the same moment. 
Christelle giggled quietly in appreciation of Jamie Humes' imitation of 
Churchill. The three of us had our picture taken together; then Jamie 
departed with her appealing smile and her good manners. I recall being 
disappointed that she could not stay longer.
  An hour or so later I found a portion of The News and Observer's 
March 12th story about Christelle. It began with the three-word heading 
I asked to appear at the top of these remarks in the Senate this 
morning. The subhead: ``A Girl Scout uses what she learned from grief 
to help other teens''.
  It is touching story about how Christelle having written a brochure 
designed to help other teenagers cope with grief. Catawba County, 
Christelle's home county, has distributed hundreds of copies of the 
brochure.
  At this point, allow me to ask to print in the Record the News and 
Observer story, written by Kelly Starling, to finish the heart-warming 
story about a young lady who has been honored by the Girl Scouts of 
America because she wanted to help others in their time of grief.
  The article follows:

          [From the Raleigh News and Observer, Mar. 12, 2002]

                            Sorrow to Solace


   A GIRL SCOUT USES WHAT SHE LEARNED FROM GRIEF TO HELP OTHER TEENS

                          (By Kelly Starling)

       At the sound of the front door closing, her ears always 
     perked up. She listened for the rap of a briefcase hitting 
     the wood floor. Then the patter of shoes that meant Daddy was 
     home. Christelle Geisler would dart from her bedroom, speed 
     down two flights of stairs and into his arms. He kissed her 
     and his two younger daughters. Then he gave the gifts: a 
     coral necklace from the Philippines or dolls from Indonesia, 
     a Japanese kimono.
       She was dad's girl.
       Phillippe Geisler traveled a lot, looking for new 
     merchandise for his furniture store. He journeyed to foreign 
     countries searching, and attended North Carolina furniture 
     shows. Home in Hickory, Christelle was his buddy. She filed 
     papers at his office. They played tennis. He teased her about 
     practicing violin.
       He was on a business trip in Florida one July night when 
     the doorbell rang.

[[Page S2071]]

     Christelle, then 15, turned away from ``Law and Order,'' got 
     up and squinted through the peephole. Two policemen stood on 
     her porch. They asked for her mother, then ushered her
     to another room: There had been a car accident, they 
     explained. Police suspected that . . .
       Christelle, who had been listening by the open door, 
     howled.
       ``I don't think I've screamed so loud in my life,'' 
     Christelle said. ``It was just raw emotion.''
       She recalled that three-year-old memory last week sitting 
     on a wooden bench across from the chapel at Meredith College, 
     where she is a freshman. Gazing at the pond, Christelle wore 
     a distant look. Grief is hard for adults to manage. But when 
     you're a teenager, she said, the voyage can be even lonelier. 
     Everyone thinks they know what you're feeling. There are few 
     resources to help you cope.
       The night she learned of her father's crash, Christelle 
     walked around like a zombie, she said. When her boyfriend, 
     Brian Giovannini, called later that night, she was crying.
       ``She was always daddy's little girl,'' he said. ``She went 
     to him for strength, for advice. When something came up in 
     her life, he was the first person she talked to.''
       That night, Christelle slept with her mother, Marie-Alix, 
     in bed. Her baby sister, Margot, who would turn 2 in the 
     following week, was asleep in a nearby cradle. In coming 
     days, they picked up her sister Emilile from violin camp. 
     And the ordeal began.
       She learned the details of her father's death: His car had 
     malfunctioned, gone over the median strip, landed in oncoming 
     traffic, flipped over. He was 40. She endured the days-long 
     wait for his body to be brought home. Neighbors cleaned their 
     house. They brought food.
       ``We had ham for about two months,'' she said.
       But Christelle couldn't eat. She kept to herself, stayed 
     away from the phone. The one time she did pick it up, the 
     caller asked about her father's organs; her dad was a donor. 
     She just wished the reality would go away: She had just one 
     parent. No father to help her choose her first car that fall. 
     Or walk her down the aisle one day.
       ``She couldn't believe it,'' Giovannini said. ``Even after 
     the funeral, it was hard for her to accept.''
       Life changed. At school that fall, Christelle kept up with 
     homework and her clubs. But in the evening, with time alone 
     to focus on herself, she faced the pain. Christelle cried in 
     her room. Her mother sent her to a church counselor, and to a 
     school counselor. Christelle resented them, feeling that they 
     didn't understand what she was facing. Mail addressed to him 
     arrived. Friends who had been out of town when the crash 
     happened asked about her dad. People kept dredging up his 
     death.
       ``You have to face it again and again,'' she said. ``What I 
     hated the most was `I've been there' from people who hadn't 
     even lost a parent yet. How could the tell me it was going to 
     be OK?''


                            A chance to help

       Christelle found solace in going to church each week and 
     becoming more active in youth group. ``It had more meaning 
     for me,'' she said.
       Then Christelle came up with the idea of researching teen 
     grief for a Girl Scout project. She had been a Girl Scout 
     since second grade, rising from Brownie to Senior Cadette. 
     She loved the support system the organization gave her, which 
     helped her learn more about herself. She earned all of the 
     pins and completed almost all the projects she needed to earn 
     a Gold Award, the Scouts' highest honor. The only thing left 
     to do was a research project: Teen grief, she decided, was 
     the perfect subject.
       She started working toward the award in January of her 
     senior year, going to public and college libraries. She found 
     scant to nothing on the subject of teen grief. She tried 
     Barnes & Noble: same thing.
       She met JoAnn Spees, director of the Council on Adolescents 
     of Catawba County. Spees helped her find enough information 
     to start her research and talked with her about her plan to 
     present it. Christelle decided that her research could 
     benefit more than herself: She would create a teen-to-teen 
     brochure for others struggling with grief.
       ``She is one of the most capable young women I've ever 
     met,'' Spees said. ``She's very talented, has an incredible 
     joie de vivre and a maturity level beyond her years.''
       Now, Christelle had a cause, Spees said. After visiting the 
     Council, Christelle left with books and diaries on grief to 
     read at home. She read everywhere, even on the beach. She 
     interviewed classmates who had lost parents to illness. She 
     talked to psychologists, to teachers whose parents had died 
     when they were young. The Gold Award project required 50 
     hours of research; Christelle, who completed the project that 
     October, logged more than 92.
       Her desire to learn was never sated. What were the stages 
     of grief she would go through? What would Emilie and Margot 
     face? Her notebook was the size of a phone book when she 
     finished. Her journal was full of pages expressing her jumble 
     of feelings: denial sometimes, longing the next.
       The brochure she created is simple and powerful. A 
     childlike drawing of a heart graces the cover. Inside, 
     there's a road map showing the journey through grief with 
     exits to shock, the ``whys'' (why them? why me? why now?) and 
     healing. She reminds teens that there's no speed limit or 
     deadline for working through grief. On the back, she offers 
     tips and explains that she is a teen who has lost someone 
     too.
       The brochure not only earned Christelle her Gold Award--an 
     honor achieved by about 3,500 Girl Scouts each year--but also 
     led to her being named one of this year's Girl Scout Gold 
     Award Young Women of Distinction--an honor shared by only 10 
     Scouts. Christelle was chosen because of the impact her 
     brochure had on the community, said Michele Landa, 
     spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the USA. Catawba County's 
     council on Adolescents has circulated more than 800 copies to 
     school counselors, pediatricians and psychologists. It has 
     been used to help students at a school where three teens died 
     in a car accident. Everyone always wants more, Spees said.
       As part of her award, Christelle is in Washington, D.C., 
     this week for a Girl Scout anniversary celebration and gala. 
     She is thought to be the first North Carolina Girl Scout to 
     receive the honor since the award began three years ago, 
     Landa said. Christelle will receive a White House tour and 
     attend a luncheon presided by U.S. Supreme Court Justice 
     Sandra Day O'Connor. She is scheduled to meet influential 
     women such as fashion designer Vera Wang U.S. Senate 
     candidate Elizabeth Dole and Kathryn Sullivan, the first 
     American woman to walk in space.
       ``Isn't that cool?'' Christelle said.


                           an emerging woman

       Doing the research, Spees said, gave her a deeper sense of 
     maturity. She had always been self-assured. But when 
     Christelle spoke at a luncheon put on by the Council on 
     Adolescents last year, Spees saw an emerging woman.
       ``She was calm, confident,'' Spees said. ``She just had a 
     sense of new control, a peace that she was conveying. Before 
     it was a cause, but now that the project was finished she 
     found a sense of closure.''
       At Meredith, Christelle looks young in a pale yellow 
     cardigan and jeans, her smooth skin and dark brown ponytail 
     accented by a red and green striped bow. But she has grown in 
     ways that don't show. She pulls out a memorial card with a 
     grainy black and white picture of her dad, showing his hair 
     parted on the side, his quirky smile.
       ``I see so much of my sisters in him now,'' she said, 
     looking at the picture while the chapel bells ring. ``His 
     smile is exactly like my little 4-year-old's. I'll never be 
     able to look at her and not see him. Dad is with us in his 
     own way.''
       It has been three years, but Christelle still returns to 
     her grief from time to time. Thinking about a special moment 
     with her dad can cause the tears to run again. She gains 
     comfort from the silver circle of moons and suns on her 
     finger--the ring he bought her in Charleston, S.C., and that 
     she still wears every day. And she leans on her faith. She 
     has even taught her youngest sister that to talk to Daddy she 
     can pray Sometimes you have to turn things over to God, she 
     said, and everything will be OK.

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