above: Darien High School athletes spread messages of love and hope on 100 hearts near the playing fields during the school’s first-ever Out of the Darkness Walk.
Photography by Katharine Calderwood
The noise level in a suburban public high school like Darien High can reach 100 decibels. That’s nearly three times the safe level set by the World Health Organization. But in the spring of 2022, the hallways fell almost deafeningly quiet.
Within a two-month period, three students there— a sophomore and two juniors, all male, all superb athletes, all widely admired, even loved—died, two by suicide. It was as though not only the school and teams but the town itself had gone into collective mourning.
How Darien residents came together over the next two and a half years to address youth mental health is a testament to the spirit of a town to recover from tragedy. It also serves as a lesson for other towns on how to help some of the most vulnerable members of our communities survive in troubled times.
A MENTAL HEALTH EPIDEMIC
Darien has often drawn criticism for placing excessive pressure on students to excel and succeed. Yet mental health care workers report having found instead an exceptional willingness on the part of residents to explore the factors impacting the mental health of the young in the community and seek possible solutions.
The Connecticut chapter of the American Society for the Prevention of Suicide (AFSP) partners with a slew of local organizations to spread the word on where struggling children and their families can get help. “Darien as a community has really gone above and beyond in using the resources an organization like ours provides,” said Michelle Peters, AFSP’s Area Director for Connecticut. “They took something that was tragic and that some people consider hard conversations around teens and mental health, and they embraced it; that they opened their arms and invited me to be a part of their efforts told me so much about the community.”
Citing a mental health epidemic, in April of this year U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced The Child Suicide Prevention and Lethal Means Safety Act. For two of the three Darien student/athletes, the initiative hadn’t come in time.
On March 31, 2022, Matthew McEvoy, 17, a lacrosse player who had privately battled depression, took his life. Less than two weeks later, 16-year-old Henry Farmer V, a hockey player, died from an untreated medical condition. On May 21, Hayden Thorsen, also 16 and a hockey star, died; he had exhibited none of the warning signs commonly associated with suicide.
A SCHOOL STEPS UP
The high school responded, and quickly. Behind the leadership of Darien Superintendent of Schools Dr. Alan Addley and Darien High School Principal Ellen Dunn, the school formed a Mental Health Task Force to help students heal. After midterm exams were modified and the Junior Prom cancelled, in late spring of 2022 a meeting room was transformed into the Wellness Center, where students could meet, talk and take part in art and music activities as well as interact with volunteers’ therapy dogs. Within weeks, the hallways had come back to life with the sound of paws on the marble floors.
Twice a month, Lynn Wilson, whose four sons had played sports at DHS, brought in Daisy, the family’s Newfoundland. “I think everyone was looking for ways to help these kids,” she said. “Daisy was like a magnet—just walking down the hallway to the Center would take ten to 15 minutes because everyone wanted to pet her.” Once there, Wilson said, some students would share with her the stresses and challenges of the school day.
For some parents, understandably, coping with the losses was going to be a long road.
HAND ON SHOULDERS
“The beginning is just so disorienting, there is no up or down or otherwise,” said Rob Thorsen, Hayden’s father. “But in time you feel compelled to act, both in honor, obviously, of Hayden and the life he lived, but also with the hopes of helping folks through maybe some of the things he must have struggled with but couldn’t necessarily articulate.”
The summer after their son’s death, Thorsen and his wife, Sarah Thompson, founded HT40—Hayden Thorsen’s initials with the number of the hockey jersey he wore—around a simple vision: to create a world “where everyone feels a part of something together, not apart from one another.” The vision boiled down to a simple gesture: A hand on a shoulder for support.
With Ben Prentiss of Prentiss Hockey Performance (where Hayden trained) and Gary Zegras from the Mid-Fairfield Youth Hockey Association (where he played) the Thorsens launched Shoulder Check, a charity to raise money for the HT40 Foundation and to empower youth athletes to “Reach out. Check in. Make contact.” Madison Square Garden signed on as a sponsor. The heart of the initiative, though, was Hayden.
“You typically don’t see that much personality in a kid that age,” Prentiss said, “but all the coaches, and everyone really, took an immediate liking to him. He was a kind, spirited kid—he made an impression on everyone.”
In late July, a capacity crowd filled the Terry Conners Ice Rink in Stamford for the first Shoulder Check Showcase. In the stands for the sold-out event—a scrimmage with NHL and local hockey players—were the many friends and fellow players Hayden regularly checked in with to see how they were.
“We discovered that Hayden was that person who was checking in on people, the one who sent the text or put the hand on a shoulder, was the hand-on-the-shoulder guy in every area of his life,” his father said. “When he passed, we got all these letters that reflected on the impact he had on their lives, and they all asked the same question: Who’s going to do what Hayden did now that he’s gone?”
One answer? Everyone he touched.
DARIEN STRONG
Outside of the families of the three boys who had passed, the pain of their deaths was most acutely felt perhaps by the mothers of DHS athletes who had played alongside the three, as well as their sons.
Back at school that September, members of the Blue Wave football team were looking for a way to show their support. The few of the mothers—Lynn Wilson, Erin Levine and Debi McGahren—thought that a T-shirt might be a way of getting out messages of support and hope.
“We knew the athletes would wear them,” said Levine, whose youngest of three sons had been close to Matthew McEvoy and Hayden Thorsen. “But then it became this thing where everybody wanted a T-shirt. It took on a life of its own.”
At this point, the football moms approached Laura Bremer, a mother of DHS athletes and the president of a Manhattan PR firm, whose family was also close to the McEvoys. “It was very delicate in those early months in post-vention,” Bremer said. “Everybody wanted to do stuff but no one was just going to do something without making sure the families were comfortable with it.”
Along with Matthew’s mother Tracy McEvoy, the women formed Wave Strong, a nonprofit aimed at destigmatizing mental health, especially among the young. Some 800 limited-edition shirts were manufactured bearing the Wave Strong logo and these messages: “It’s Okay Not to Be Okay,” “We Got Your Back” and “Speak to Someone.” The shirts quickly sold out, with the proceeds going to the Connecticut chapter of the AFSP. On September 17, a Wave Strong team appeared at the popular annual Community Fund’s Darien Road Race joined by a throng of DHS athletes among other young adults and adults.
Over the next nine months, that initial support of youth mental health found expression in a number of additional ways.
In the winter and spring of 2023, the boys and girls basketball and hockey teams raised money for the AFSP-CT during the first Winter Wave Strong Week. During Kindness Week, the organization also spread the message “you are loved and are not alone” by placing 100 hearts on a fence along the oval roadway surrounding the high school’s athletic fields. And in April, the first-ever Out of the Darkness Campus Walk at DHS was the largest such fundraiser in Connecticut.
Then, in the late fall of 2023, something remarkable happened.
PASTA AND COMPASSION
Among high school football rivalries in the state, none approaches the annual Darien Blue Wave and New Canaan Rams Turkeybowl. Since 1928, the teams have waged holy athletic war on Thanksgiving Day in a tradition that draws sold-out crowds. The game seems to bring out the beast in players, coaches and alumni.
“It’s always been a heated event,” said Andy Grant, Darien’s head coach. “Lou Marinelli [the Rams’ head coach] and I are obviously rivals, at fairly significant football schools, with significant rivalries in all sports. There are lots of alphas playing football—it’s just the nature of the beast.”
Yet in November of 2023, two weeks before they were to meet for the 93rd time (having missed one game, in 2020, due to Covid), the archrivals sat down to a pasta dinner in, as Laura Bremer viewed the historic event, “support of the power of community to de-stigmatize mental health.” Behind an unspoken code of silence, Bremer noted, boys and men (and especially male athletes) are four times more likely to die by suicide than females. Most, if not all, of the Darien players had known Matthew and Hayden, who had been popular as well as gifted, as had a number of the New Canaan football players.
The historic dinner was organized by the Wave Strong Foundation and funded by Darien developer David Genovese and Nate Checketts, the founder of the men’s performance brand Rhone, who is a Darien resident but grew up in New Canaan and played for the Rams.
The NFL sent a video in which Steve Young and other star pros spoke to the young Darien athletes about the need for a better understanding of mental health. But the emotional highlight of the night came when Rob Thorsen asked the more than 200 young football players and invited adult guests to place a hand on the shoulder of the person next to them, referencing his late-son’s habit of checking in on his wide circle of friends.
Death at a young age in a New England town—Grovers Corner, New Hampshire or Darien, Connecticut—is a stark reminder of the transience of life. In this our town, the three boys’ passings may also serve to remind us that that it’s OK not to be OK, that we’re not alone and we are loved, and that an entire community has its hand on our shoulders.