Juan Diego play dedicated to injured student

Courtesy photo/ Mickelle Marston

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Two prayer services for Peter Benda have been held in the Juan Diego Catholic High School grotto.

DRAPER — The cast of Juan Diego Catholic High School’s "The Drowsy Chaperone" decided the play must go on Monday as a tribute to Pete Benda, a technical crew member who was critically injured in a fall Oct. 26.

The Oct. 26 and 27 shows were canceled due to Benda’s accident.

Benda, a freshman, was on a lift changing light bulbs when the lift fell and he landed on the stage. A Utah Fire Authority report estimated he fell 15 to 20 feet, suffering a broken femur and a head injury.

"Benda is still in a coma, but is making baby steps in his recovery. He swatted at the nurse who was pinching him to get a response," according an Oct. 29 post on the JDCHS Facebook page. "The Benda Family is going with the saying ‘slow and steady wins the race!’ The family appreciates the outpouring of love and prayers, and feels truly blessed to be part of such a great community. Please continue to pray."

Benda’s parents are both involved with the school community. His mother, Chris Benda, is a first-grade teacher at Saint John the Baptist Elementary School; and his father, Rob Benda, is the Saint John the Baptist lacrosse coach.

When Benda fell, the school's emergency response team mobilized to help him before paramedics arrived to transport him to Intermountain Medical Center, said Molly Dumas, Juan Diego director of institutional advancement/public information, adding, "Counselors have helped students who were witnesses to the accident or were upset by the news."

Students haven’t been allowed to visit Benda in the hospital, so they held a rosary vigil in the Juan Diego grotto after school the day of the accident. A second prayer service was held Oct. 28.

The day after the accident, the "Drowsy Chaperone" cast and crew met for a previously scheduled dinner and "they spontaneously decided to do a closed-door showing of the play for themselves and their immediate family members," said Dr. Galey Colosimo, Juan Diego principal. "It allowed the students to let go of their emotions, get back in the space where the accident happened, resume normal operations and procedures, and prepared them for a good show on Monday."

Three Juan Diego students have had serious head injuries since the middle of the summer, Colosimo said. "It’s been a pretty traumatic school year for us," he added. "So when incidences like this happen, those unstated but very real emotions rise to the surface, and as traumatic as it was for us on Friday with Pete, what was added to that was the underlying remembrance of Adam Colosimo."

Adam Colosimo died July 10 after an accident; he was the first enrolled student to die in the school’s 13-year history.

"The mantra under which Juan Diego has tried to operate since Adam Colosimo’s death is to acknowledge an event, embrace it, and move on in as normal a way as possible," said Colosimo. "The students look to us to know how to act and behave so we are trying to strike the proper balance between grieving, acknowledging and praying, while at the same time not over-emphasizing it or dwelling on it to the point where the students cannot go about their daily routine of simply being high school students."