‘Extraordinary child’ mourned

Published Saturday, June 3, 2006

LADUE (AP) - A young woman described as "an extraordinary child" with the world "at her feet" was laid to rest Thursday, nearly a week after her body was discovered in her South Carolina apartment, a bathing suit top used to strangle her still around her neck.

About 600 grieving family members and friends, former classmates and teachers filled a Roman Catholic church here, spilling into its aisles and vestibules. They gathered at the Church of the Annunziata in this St. Louis suburb of stately homes, private lanes and expansive lawns, to bid farewell to 20-year-old Tiffany Marie Souers at her funeral Mass.

Souers’ father said after the funeral that the family had been consumed with great sadness and great love over the past few days.

"We had to get through these last three days. It was a very, very intense," Jim Souers told The Associated Press by telephone. "It’s not just, ‘She’s great because she’s our daughter’ that’s commonplace. She was great because she actually did things to prove she was great."

Outside the church, the pealing of bells and bagpipes playing a solemn tune broke the morning silence as a light rain began to fall.

Young women in black dresses - sorority sisters and former classmates - hugged at the memory of their friend. Eight dark-suited pallbearers in gloves, followed by immediate family, carried the casket inside the church. An hour later, they adorned the casket with flowers and returned it to the hearse for transport to its final resting place. Media were barred from the church and cemetery.

"Some questions seem not to have answers," Monsignor Richard Stika, the church’s pastor, said before the service. "The death of a young person, an act of violence. ... It’s evident the great love people have for her. She was a lovely person filled with great spirit and faith."

Delia Garcia, a family friend attending the funeral service, said it was a fitting farewell for a special individual.

"She was just an extraordinary child. She loved life," Garcia said. "She could have done anything she set her mind to. The world was at her feet."

Garcia, a radiation oncologist, said she deals with death all the time. But this, she said, is "too big a loss to comprehend. The amount of grief must be overwhelming."

Souers was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at Clemson University, an agricultural and engineering school. She had been working with a charitable group and been asked to serve on its board of directors. Faith Clark, director of the charity, described Souers as "very focused ... and very driven on not messing her life up."

She was a 2004 graduate of Villa Duchesne High School, an independent Catholic girls school in suburban St. Louis, where she led the campus ministry and retreats for her class and others.

Bren Souers has said her daughter immersed herself in opportunities of public service because "she got so much from giving ... and had so much more to give."

"I know she is totally at peace and fine where she is," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "But we needed her longer. The only way I can cope is knowing that God must have had a huge project up there and that he needed someone to run it."