Niagara’s Most Remarkable Family Of The Year – The Anzovino/Kennedy Family

By Doug Draper

 In my 33 years as a reporter, I’ve covered my share of people facing bad times and have been so often impressed with how remarkable people facing the worst of times in their lives can soar above them with strength and dignity.

Reilly's parents, Tim Anzovino and Denise Kennedy, making a final statement following the inquest in to their daughter's death. Photo by Doug Draper

There is no award I can think of in Niagara, Ontario for a family that fits that tall bill, but if I could pick one for the year 2011, it would be the Anzovino/Kennedy family of Fort Erie, Ontario.

 This is the family of Reilly Anzovino who died at age 18 – two years ago this December 27 – following a car accident on a stretch of Highway 3 between Port Colborne and her hometown of Fort Erie. The accident occurred after the Niagara Health System had shut down the emergency rooms in the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospitals earlier that year. And to say that this family has

 The family, including  Reilly’s mom, Denise Kennedy, and Reilly’s dad, Tim Anzovino, their son Kain and so many other supportive members, worked with the support of the Fort Erie area community to get Ontario’s chief coroner, Dr. Andrew McCallum, to hold a “discretionary inquest” in to the matter – no small thing since mandatory inquests are usually only held for cases of murder and the like.

 The family chose to go through this knowing, as they stated over and over again, that nothing will bring Reilly back. Yet they said if something comes out of the inquiry that may prevent other families from living through the same nightmare of a call from the police, notifying them that a member of their family has died in a sudden, tragic accident, it is worth it.

Whether the thoughtful recommendations coming out of the inquest, which ended this past December 21, amount to real changes that may prevent further tragedies like this remains to be seen. It is now up to the various public bodies and levels of government the recommendations are directed at to implement them.

 What one can say, however, is that the Anzovino/Kennedy family, having sat through more than three weeks of heart-wrenching details about the final one hour and 54 minutes between the time the accident occurred on December 26, 2009 at 11:27 p.m. and the time Reilly, a passenger in one of the colliding vehicles, was pronounced dead at 1:21 a.m. the following day, sat through the inquest with the upmost of courage and dignity.

Indeed, the word “courage” was used several times by lawyers involved in the inquest to describe the demeanor of this outstanding family. Dr. Jack Stanborough, the regional coroner for the province presiding over the inquest, put it this way at the end; An inquest like this, he said, “is very tough and hard on the family because you have a cut and the wound is healing, and you are picking at that wound again.”

 The wound will probably never heal completely for the Anzovino/Kennedy family but it would help if the recommendations from this inquest, tabled by a five-person jury and listed in a post December 22 on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com, were adopted.

 This family, members of whom took time out during breaks in the inquest to actually ask some of us how we were doing, would no doubt be most appreciative to accept the adoption of those recommendations as an award

They deserve far more than that though. In a culture where ‘good citizenship’ and other awards of that nature are handed out like candy to people in small, elite circles of those with the right contacts, these people deserve awards regionally and provincially for all of the terrible pain they have been through and for trying to turn that pain into meaningful changes for better health care for all residents across this region and province.

 This family has done the people of our region and province a  great service.

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