Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501160071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BARBARA STEWART NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: JERICHO, N.Y. LENGTH: Long
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Soo Yeun's body must have ached as she worked until 2 or 3 in the morning. That fall, she'd come home each night to an enormous pile of work, all due by Dec. 1. She had essays to write for her first choice for college, Harvard, and for Yale and Princeton. And she had two years of archaeological research to write on Neanderthal man's diet, her project for Westinghouse, the country's most competitive and prestigious high school science award.
The college applications were her future; the Westinghouse study her passion, her present.
This week, the Westinghouse Science Talent competition honored Soo Yeun's toil and passion by naming her a semifinalist, the first time in its 54-year history it has made an award posthumously. In so doing, it also honored the love of her friends, who, hours before the contest deadline, completed and express-mailed her project.
Soo Yeun was killed in a car crash Nov. 28. Her study will go on to compete for the finalists' awards but no further. Interviews are required of the top 10 winners.
``The night before, she was finally seeing light,'' said Brian Lee, a friend and fellow senior. ``The night before was the happiest moment.''
Early that Monday, ducking the rain and brandishing a computer disk, Soo Yeun burst excitedly into her science teacher's office and tossed it to him. ``She had that beaming smile she was well known for and she said, `Sachs! It's done!''' recalled Allen Sachs, her science teacher at Jericho High School.
Three hours later, she and Joseph Ching, a friend and equally bright Jericho senior, were dead, killed when his car rounded a rain-slicked curve, crossed the double yellow line and collided head-on with a van. The driver of the van suffered only cuts and bruises.
That afternoon, in the midst of the numbness and grief, Brian Lee kept thinking of Soo Yeun's Neanderthal study.
``It was all there, but in pieces,'' he said. ``It seemed like a bad idea to let two years of research go. It seemed like the greatest tribute to her commitment was to take the effort to do the detail work to finish her application.''
Though Brian had his own Westinghouse application to finish, he gathered at school that Tuesday with 16 other seniors, Soo Yeun's friends, to fit together the pieces of Soo Yeun's study and fill out the application. The students spent the entire day in that room, talking, hugging and offering Brian suggestions.
``I set aside my feelings,'' he said. ``I didn't give myself time to think. I worked on adrenaline.''
He filled out the application for her. What classes did she like the most? The least? Everybody knew: English and history, she loved; chemistry, government and gym, she loathed. At only one question did Brian break down: ``What would you really like to be doing 10 or 15 years from now?''
Not until all the i's were dotted on Soo Yeun's application did Brian finish his own.
``As mundane as that work was, it had to get done for the application to get in. He totally put aside his own work. You could almost say he sacrificed his own Westinghouse work,'' Sachs said.
Indeed, after the deadline, Brian reread his own project and saw a crucial typographical error. If he'd had time to proofread, he might have caught it.
Gathering together to work was an appropriate way to honor Soo Yeun. She and her friends constantly studied together. They commuted together to the high school honors science program at State University at Stony Brook. Nights, they would take breaks and walk in the woods or hunt frogs in the Kims' pool.
``We'd go to the diner after a movie and talk so loud the other people would get real annoyed and go, `Sshhh!''' said Joseph Pinto, a Jericho senior. ``She loved classical novels. She kept wanting me to read `Pride and Prejudice' - her favorite.''
Soo Yeun's other love was classical music. She was first flutist in the Jericho orchestra and had been named a first alternate in the New York state youth orchestra, scoring a perfect 100.
At her audition, her mother and her music teacher surreptitiously pressed their ears to the door. ``Afterward, the judge said, `You don't deserve her,''' recalls Dale Moser, a music teacher at Jericho. The judge meant she was too good for high school. They've left the first flutist's seat vacant at Jericho High in her memory.
The Kims' November telephone bill shows the turning point on the day of Soo Yeun's death. Before 9 a.m. are many calls to Ewing, N.J.; Soo Yeun had called the college board exam center to make sure her test scores had been sent out. In the afternoon, there is call after call to Korea, as the Kims told relatives the sorrowful news.
``How can I live without her?'' said Soo Yeun's father, Dr. Kee Young Kim. ``I don't know. I'm trying to understand. All I can think: God pick the sweetest, most beautiful flower first.''
Soo Yeun's mentor for the Westinghouse project, Dr. Curtis Marean at Stony Brook, is of the opinion that God also picked the smartest. Soo Yeun's Westinghouse project was worthy of a graduate student, he said.
``Well, Marean just piled more work on me since he said I was making `rapid progress,''' Soo Yeun wrote in her research diary. ``One of the undergraduates can't get over the fact that I am 16. He thinks I'm some sort of strange person who knows too much for my time or something weird like that.''
Soo Yeun's and Joseph Ching's deaths pulled the small high school together in a shared communion of sorrow.
``She's made us do better. People are trying to live up to Soo Yeun's and Joseph's standards - and they're very high standards,'' Sachs said.
Soo Yeun's friend Joseph Pinto takes comfort in the beauty of her grave at a cemetery with columns and pillars.
``The romanticism, it's like the classicism of the novels she loved to read,'' he said. ``I can see her lean against them and read.''
On the morning they announced the Westinghouse winners, Soo Yeun's sister, Yoonji, went to school clutching the big envelope. As she told Sachs and all her sister's friends the good news, she was crying.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB