Seleny Crosby is remembered as a faith-filled peacemaker

Friday, May. 16, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY — Seleny Joanne Crosby was led into Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic Church one last time by her older brother, David, and her identical twin sister, Doris, who were altar servers for her funeral Mass May 7. 

Seleny’s youngest sister, Danielle, held on to the casket as she walked in the liturgical procession with the pallbearers under the guard of the fourth degree Knights of Columbus. 

“She was always there for me,” said Danielle.

“This is a place where Seleny felt that she belonged very much,” said Father John Norman, pastor, who celebrated the Mass.

Among those present for the Mass were members from the Jordan School District and Welby Elementary School, where Seleny was in the fourth grade; her family members; and others from the community and the Girl Scout troop of which she had been a member. 

“Death is difficult under any circumstance,” Fr. Norman said during his homily. “… It’s the loss of someone that we love, and at that moment we’re not quite sure what to do. It is so overwhelming. This came so unexpected.”

Seleny died on May 2 after being hit by a school bus in South Jordan. 

The 10-year-old girl was a “peacemaker,” said her aunt Maria Crosby Currier. “She missed her grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins when the family lived in Texas. She was happy when her family moved back to Utah because she wanted us all to be together. She loved taking care of my mother [her grandmother]. She wanted to be a physician like my husband, Nathan.” 

Nathan Currier heard his niece’s career plans at the hospital after she was fatally injured, and he “burst into tears,” he said. “We would always call her our little doctor.” 

Seleny’s twin sister agreed. “She liked giving my grandmother her medication and her vitamins and she was always saying she wanted to be a doctor,” Doris said. 

Seleny was a spiritual girl, her family and friends recalled. 

She enjoyed being an altar server and she loved her family, said Margrett Hall, the parish’s fourth-grade religious education and altar server instructor. “Her parents taught the kindergarten religious education class and were really involved with their children.”

Oddly enough, the week before Seleny died, Hall taught a lesson to her religious education class about how sometimes “things happen in our lives that are hard and we don’t understand why,” she said. “My husband was killed in Vietnam 41 years ago, but now he is my guardian angel. The next week, Doris and David said Seleny was going to be their guardian angel in heaven.”

Seleny and her twin sister did everything together, said Doris. When they fought, “Seleny would stop the fight by talking about Jesus and Mary, and I would always hug her and she would give me a hug and a kiss,” said Doris. “She would clasp her hands like she was praying, and she loved the Blessed Mother.”

Seleny and her siblings participated in karate and, before the accident, were planning to attend a tournament in Colorado, said Doris. “We were both blue belts.”

Seleny loved to exercise and would run up to seven miles a day to prepare for karate; she had won several karate competitions in Texas, said Currier. 

“She had big plans,” said Rose Zagal, Seleny’s cousin. “I enjoyed getting to know her and feeding off of her energy and her curiosity for life.” 

It’s hard for Seleny’s cousin, Esperanza Zagal, to “think that Seleny’s mission was fulfilled at such a young age,” she said. “She seems to have gone prematurely. I hope her mission continues to carry out and is felt by her family on earth in years to come.”