Death of Timber Creek student, 14, stuns east Orange community
Grace Foley was an outgoing 14-year-old with a contagious smile, who spoke as easily to adults as other kids, served on the student council, played softball and loved to wear mismatched socks.
“She was always smiling,” said Dominic Vitiello, a close friend of the family. “You just gravitate to her. The room is lit up because of her.”
Grace died Tuesday morning after having an epileptic seizure and collapsing Monday night at her home in Avalon Park, he said. The ninth grader at Timber Creek High School had been diagnosed with the disorder earlier this year.
Her death left her family — dubbed “the Foley Five” by friends — heartbroken, and it saddened many in the east Orange County community where the Foleys lived.
A GoFundMe account set up to help with funeral and other expenses raised more than $55,000 by Wednesday.
“We are all processing this with heavy hearts and sadness. It’s dif-
ficult to imagine a world without this beautiful, fun, silly, smiling face in it,” wrote Michelle Muller Sperry, who organized the fund.
Grace was the oldest of Justin and Mary Foley’s three children.
“She was a very Godly person, very strong in her faith,” Mary Foley said.
At a prayer circle for her organized by Timber Creek classmates Wednesday morning, Mary Foley said a student approached her to say Grace was the first student who introduced herself when she started at the school, not knowing anyone.
Grace made friends easily, loved wrestling with her younger brother and was “very mothering” to her younger sister, her mother said. She was also a natural leader, “loved being in the spotlight” and delighted in being funny, which may explain why she often wore mismatched socks.
That was true Monday, when she showed up to her softball game in uniform, except for the socks, which were not the team-issued black ones but two random ones. Mary Foley said she half scolded Grace, saying, “Where are your black socks? This is a uniform.”
Grace explained it was National Sock Day, but put the team socks on in the dugout.
“Anything to be funny,” her mother said.
Friends, neighbors and former teachers called her a sweet and considerate kid.
“Grace was the kind of student you always remember,” wrote one teacher on the GoFundMe page. “The kind of student who told others to be considerate and kind ... to pay attention to the teacher ... The kind of child to say hi and bye to you EVERYDAY and light up your day.”
At Timber Creek, the student government association called her a “selfless and loving person” and used Twitter to urge students to attend the prayer circle in her memory.
“Her personality and smile made everyone feel joy from the moment you meet her,” tweeted another Timber Creek student. “Her trademark was her goofy mismatch socks, so for the rest of the week, try and wear a pair of mismatch socks.”
Last year, Grace was student council president at Avalon Middle School and a cheerleader for the Avalon Pop Warner football team. This year, she was on student council at Timber Creek and playing on a local softball team.
“This is like the mayor of Avalon, as far as kids,” said Vitiello, whose daughter was Grace’s best friend.
Paramedics who came to the Foley house Monday night called for a helicopter, which flew Grace to Florida Hospital for Children near downtown Orlando. She died there Tuesday morning.
Dan Ashby, another neighbor and friend of the family, said the money raised also would help cover any medical bills sent to the family.
“We don’t want them to sweat anything,” Ashby said.
Justin and Mary Foley, who were both in the U.S. Marine Corps, are “great parents,” he said, who, no matter how busy, always make time to do volunteer work with their children, taking Grace, Julian and Ave to serve meals to needy residents at Thanksgiving, for example. Grace, he added, was a teenager who “had everything going for her.”
Friends stunned by Grace’s death comforted themselves by saying, “Sometimes God needs some really tough soldiers,” Ashby said.
Still, the loss hit hard. “It’s never right to bury your own children,” he said. “This is just awful.”