Moms use charity to overcome a tragedy

What do you do when a child you've spent your life living for stops living?

That was the ridiculously hard question in 2008 for Kaye Knoop, Kelly Yeates, Ellen Knell, Cindy Blount and Alice Pennels.

The deaths of their respective sons and daughters during a dizzying seven-month span last year were as abrupt as they were tragic; as heart-rending as they were unexplainable.

Two were hit by cars while walking, one turned the steering wheel too quickly and the car flipped, one slipped while hiking and one went to sleep and did not wake up.

The youngest was 17, the oldest 20. They were just getting traction on the road of life. All five graduated from Park City High School within a year or two of each other. Their parents lived in the same town, a short drive from one another. What were the odds?

Their friends, family and community mourned them as only the young are mourned.

And for their mothers, there was a special kind of grief accompanied by an emptiness seemingly impossible to fill.

But then they found each other, and together they identified a way they could keep on mothering.

To honor their children and keep alive their memories they would build a school for them.

They contacted a humanitarian organization that told them of a collection of small villages at the top of the Andes in Ecuador that need a school desperately.

Desperately, they could relate to.

The Park City Five project was born.

This July, a collection of high school students, teachers, volunteers and The Moms will converge in the rarefied air above Riobamba, Ecuador, where they will build and dedicate a school to the following:

Mike Pennels, who died inexplicably in his sleep on Feb. 3, 2008.

Connie Blount, a University of Kentucky freshman who was hit by a car and killed while crossing the street in Lexington, Ky., on April 13, 2008.

Matt Knoop, an LDS Church missionary who was hit by a car and killed while walking home from church in Brazil on April 21, 2008.

Chris Yeates, who lost his footing on a hiking trail in Austria and fell to his death on June 30, 2008.

Erica Knell, who died after her car rolled on I-80 on Sept. 5, 2008.

The mothers were strangers until calamity introduced them.

Kaye and Kelly were the first to meet. Their homes are both in the Jeremy Ranch area of Park City, and they got together on walks they are sure their boys Matt and Chris somehow arranged.

Then Ellen Knell, Erica's mom and the newest member of what they have taken to calling The Club No One Wants To Join, reached out to all five moms, sending an e-mail that suggested they get together and talk about providing service in the name of their children.

No one balked. As opposed to all the things they couldn't do, this was something they could do.