< Back | Home

A memorial service was held yesterday afternoon for Mary Ellen "Molly" Offer, who was struck and killed by a car two weeks ago.

A piece of Molly Offer's artwork was displayed at yesterday's memorial service.

URI community, family, friends remember Molly Offer at campus memorial service

By: Robert Preliasco

Posted: 4/22/08

04/22/08 - In a remembrance ceremony held yesterday for Mary Ellen "Molly" Offer, a University of Rhode Island sophomore struck and killed by a car two weeks ago, there were as many smiles and laughs at the memory of her as there were tears for her passing. By all accounts, that is the way Molly would have wanted it.

Family and friends filled the URI Catholic Center to remember the woman whose smile, they said, would light up a room. Molly was able to light up one more room yesterday, grinning between rosy cheeks in every one of the hundreds of pictures of her on display.

"The girl took a million pictures because every moment was special with Molly," Offer's friend and freshman year roommate Lindsay Bradshaw said.

Molly's friends shared some of these moments and remembered them as the best in their lives.

Corey Lester told a story in which Molly, coming from New Jersey where there are no self-service gas stations, became confused at a Rhode Island station and inserted her mother's credit card into the pump's receipt slot and got it stuck.

"I am yet to be reminded of anything we did together that has not brought a huge smile to my face," Lester said.

Molly's friends and family said they will remember her for all the little things that made her the person she was.

Molly would scream out a song while stopped at a traffic light, (even if she didn't know the words,) she hated giving high-fives and she loved to mix Slurpee flavors at 7-Eleven. A relatively short person, she never told anyone her exact height, even her close friends.

Molly was the youngest of five sisters. She loved road trips and would drive to Barrington, R.I. to visit her oldest sister, Brennan, and her nieces and cousins without thinking twice.

An art major and Dean's List student, Molly was becoming interested in creating scenery for theatre productions. She liked to visit Disney World and was planning a trip to Italy this summer.

She died on April 6, 2008. She was 19 years old.

Out of all these hundreds of traits, there were a few that friends and family mentioned again and again. They said Molly's ever-present smile was a reminder of her optimism, and that Molly was a person they could talk to about anything.

"My roommate was my best friend," said Holly Maganzini, who lived with Molly in Aldrich Hall and was injured in the accident that took her life. "Even though I only knew Molly for two years she was someone I could tell anything to."

Maganzini was often at Molly's side and they together formed the duo "Holly and Molly." Through tears, Maganzini laughed to remember that most people's reaction to this was an incredulous, "Are you serious?"

Maganzini said that she always thought the "Holly and Molly" nickname was funnier than Molly did, but she was always willing to play along to make Holly happy.

"It was truly a blessing to have Molly as a roommate and one of my best friends," Maganzini said.

Another friend, John Cooke, said that it was common for Molly to go out of her way to make people happy.

"She really devoted herself to her friends," he said, "Even to acquaintances. She poured herself out to people."

Cooke lived with Molly in Aldrich Hall and he said it was comforting to be so close to her.

"Whenever anything really hard happened she was the one you would turn to," he said.

Cooke added, "Everyone who knew her truly was blessed by it."

And Molly seems to have known a lot of people. Her friend Matt Holmes said more than 1,000 people attended Molly's funeral mass in New Jersey, including a busload of URI students.

"It has been absolutely amazing the amount of people who have come around and contacted us and attended the services in New Jersey," Brennan Offer said yesterday morning. "Molly lived life to the full and she just touched so many lives. It's phenomenal how many lives she has touched in 19 years."

Rev. John Soares, who knew Molly through her work as a Eucharistic Minister at Christ the King Church, remembered Molly for her joy, her caring nature and her faith.

"She had a smile that would light up the room," he said. "She was always positive. She really believed the way to serve God was by loving the people around her."

Molly became a minister last semester, at the start of her sophomore year. She helped to give the Eucharist, a ceremony that Catholics believe turns bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

"A very important part of who she was, was her faith," Soares said. "Being able to give people the body and blood of Christ must have been a very profound thing for her to do."

Brennan Offer, 32, said her youngest sister was a great friend and a spiritual person.

All five Offer sisters went to The Immaculate Heart Academy, a Catholic School for girls in New Jersey. Brennan and Molly were the only sisters to go to a secular college and Molly chose to go to URI to follow Brennan, who is a URI alumna.

The Offer family's faith is helping them to cope with Molly's loss.

"My husband said about Molly that 'her laugh went from here all the way up to heaven,'" Brennan Offer said. "The only thing we can tell ourselves is, 'God just wanted to be in on that joke.'"