Jane Gaudreau needed a project after the loss of her two sons. She found one in the Gaudreau Family 5K.
As she grieved the tragic loss of her sons, Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, she got some advice. What she hopes will follow is a gift for children at her beloved school that would make her boys proud.
The day after Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau died, their mother, Jane, received a text from a friend, Kelsie Snow. Snow’s late husband, Chris, had been an executive for the NHL’s Calgary Flames, where Johnny played for eight-plus seasons.
Chris Snow died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2023. Kelsie understood the grief that Gaudreau was experiencing.
She gave her some advice.
“Find a project,” Snow said. “It will help you.”
The suggestion made sense. It seemed like everyone in Gaudreau’s life had something to keep their minds occupied. Her daughter, Kristen Venello, had a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old to take care of. Her younger daughter, Katie, was a first-grade teacher, and ran a dance studio.
The soccer and softball practices weren’t going to stop. The dance recitals had to continue. But for Jane and her husband, Guy, just getting out of bed took effort.
So, she began to think about what her project would be. And then it came to her.
“The playground,” she said to herself. “That’s what we should do.”
Gaudreau’s late mother, Marie Lloyd, worked at Archbishop Damiano School, a special education school in Westville, N.J., for 44 years. Jane has worked there for 41 years, and Venello has worked there for almost 20.
Johnny and Matthew volunteered at Archbishop Damiano throughout high school and connected with many of the students. They loved kids. The school’s playground was outdated and inaccessible for children with disabilities. Why not find a way to raise money so the school could build a new one?
In October, Gaudreau’s friend, Debbie Vasaturo, suggested a 5K and offered to organize it. Gaudreau got involved in early March. It has given her a sense of purpose as she mourns the loss of her sons.
“My vision is hearing the kids out there, laughing and playing,” she said. “And I just hope the boys will be able to hear it, and be able to see it, somehow. And think, ‘This is what my parents and my sisters did for us.’”
A new normal
Johnny and Matthew died on a Thursday night, Aug. 29, 2024. They were riding their bikes on County Route 551 in their hometown of Oldmans Township, Salem County. Katie was supposed to get married that Friday; her brothers were supposed to be groomsmen.
According to New Jersey State Police, a 43-year-old driver with a blood-alcohol level of .087 veered right and hit them from behind. They suffered fatal injuries from the collision and died at the scene. Johnny was 31; Matthew was 29.
Katie’s wedding was postponed. Instead, there was a funeral service and a viewing. Thousands of people attended — old friends, community members, NHL players and executives. The service itself was a blur; Jane can’t remember most of the people she spoke to.
Johnny had played 10 full seasons in the NHL and was named to the All-Star Game seven times. Matthew played parts of three seasons in the AHL and parts of four seasons in the ECHL, and transitioned to a career in coaching in 2021.
Because they were so entrenched in the hockey community, the response to their passing was overwhelming. Gaudreau and her husband received about 600 Mass cards in the mail. There were flowers, trees, and letters from people all over the world: Russia, Ireland, Germany, Sweden.
“I don’t know how they got our address,” she said. “We’re probably the only Gaudreau in New Jersey.”
She took off work in the month of September and began to sort through it all, trying to at least look at every card. But those memories are hazy, too. She put the letters in two big boxes. “Maybe I’ll go through it again,” she said.
This is the family’s new reality. Hearing from thousands of people they’ve never met, and learning how people they’ve known for years perceive them now. When she and Venello returned to work, in October, a coworker saw them in the break room and did an about-face — not out of disrespect, but in an attempt to be polite.
Something similar happened when Jane started greeting students at the school.
“I would go into the hallway, and I would say, ‘Hi, how are you?’” she said. “And they’d be like, ‘Hi.’
“No one wants to say ‘Hi, how are you?’ But I’ve learned to say, ‘OK,’ you know? ‘I’m OK. I’m going to be OK.’”
Some days are easier than others, and going back to work has helped. At first, she didn’t want to talk to too many people. Over time, it felt more normal. Students would give her high fives and coworkers would give her hugs.
But it has been impossible to predict what will spark a memory.
Guy is from Vermont, and when his family moved to Oldmans Township, he cut down all the wood for their hardwood floors. He dried it, planed it, sanded it, and the end result was “beautiful,” in his wife’s telling. But the boys liked to tease him about this one little knot.
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“They’d be like, ‘Dad, this cheap wood you bought,’” she said. “And he’d say, ‘That’s not cheap wood! I cut that down!’ And I’d say, ‘Guy, why do you let them get to you? You know that’s why they do it.’”
A couple of months ago, she was walking in her house and tripped on the knot.
“I totally lost it,” she said. “And my husband was like, ‘What’s wrong? What happened? Did you get hurt?’ No, I didn’t. It just made me think of them.
“Grief is so, so unbelievably strange. It’s just crazy, little things. Sometimes [I] keep busy, especially with work, or with my grandchildren. And then, for any reason … I mean, it could be anything. I could open up the refrigerator and it brings back a memory. So, that part has been difficult.”
For as painful as it has been, Gaudreau and her husband have taken comfort in the tributes that others have made to their sons. They’ve learned things they wouldn’t otherwise know; tiny acts of kindness that went untold.
In September, Sewell’s Hollydell Ice Arena, where the brothers had once skated as boys, held a vigil. A mother of a player Matthew coached a few years ago walked up to Gaudreau.
She explained that her eldest son had died, and her youngest was struggling at the time. Matthew helped fill the void. He told him to focus on hockey, to focus on school, and to do it for his parents and his late brother.
It turned his life around.
“Matty would have never come home and said, ‘Guess what I did?’” Gaudreau said. “He might have just thought, ‘Hey, all right, good. He listened to me.’ Not thinking that he had such a major or profound impact on this player. And that was very comforting, and a bit healing.”
“If there was an article, or a TV interview, I remember [seeing comments like], ‘How can you do this to these poor people? Just let them be,’” she added. “And what they don’t realize is, it actually helps us. Because all of these other people who knew John and Matty, and all of the people who follow them, they’re also grieving.
“And so many people have reached out and told us stories that we would have never heard. We still hear stories now. And I think, at the 5K, we’ll probably hear even more.”
Finding purpose
Gaudreau was introduced to Archbishop Damiano through her brother, Ricky Lloyd. He had multiple disabilities, and his family had to find a school that would fit his needs. He tried it out for a couple of weeks, and enrolled in 1972.
Their mother, Marie, began to volunteer there, and was hired later that year as a ceramics teacher. She worked her way up to becoming a workshop supervisor, helping students develop skills they could use after graduation.
Marie was a single mother, and didn’t have a babysitter she could rely upon. So, Jane spent a lot of time at the school, too. Like her mother, she began as a volunteer, and transitioned into a full-time job, in finance.
“A year or two ago, we added up [the time] my mom, myself, and Kristen have worked here, not including volunteer work,” Gaudreau said. “It was over 100 years, and that was just us.”
All of Gaudreau’s children have volunteered at Archbishop Damiano. Johnny and Matthew gravitated to the older students. There was one, in particular, they connected with. His name was Roger. He worked under Marie in the workshop, and was a big sports fan.
When Johnny and Matthew went off to Boston College, Roger would watch their games, and alert Jane whenever they were televised. This continued when Johnny transitioned into the NHL.
“One day, Roger came into my office and said, ‘Tonight I’m going to watch Johnny on TV,’” Gaudreau said. “And I said, ‘Oh, they don’t play tonight.’ He goes, ‘No, he has an interview on NHL Network.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so, Roger.’
“And he goes, ‘Yeah, it’s tonight.’ And I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he goes, ‘Six o’clock, six o’clock sharp.’ So I Google it, and I call John, and I’m like, ‘Are you doing an interview today?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, with NHL Network.’
“I think he was more excited that Roger told me than either me or Guy or anybody in our family watching it. He goes, ‘Oh, Roger’s going to watch it?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, Roger’s going to watch it!’”
Even when the boys were older, with families and careers of their own, they found ways to give back to Archbishop Damiano. In 2018, Johnny wanted to make a donation to the school. His mother suggested the Scholastic Book Fair.
He donated a free book to each student. Five years later, in 2023, Marie died at age 83. To honor her memory, the family donated to the playground.
But now it is in need of a bigger makeover. The playground sits in front of the school, alongside Route 47. The sounds of cars driving by alone can be overstimulating for some students, who have to wear noise-canceling headphones when they’re playing outside.
When Archbishop Damiano was founded in the 1960s, it was meant to be a school for children with Down syndrome. But its population has changed in the decades since.
The school now accepts more students, including those with physical and gross motor challenges. The playground in its current state isn’t built for that population. It’s on rubberized turf, which has been worn down and has no cushion, and is inaccessible for students in wheelchairs.
“We’re trying to get something that’s more adapted, that students have greater access to, that they really can have more fun on, because we have all these things that are really not safe,” said Michele McCloskey, Archbishop Damiano’s principal. “The Little Tikes equipment is not meant for our population. But we’ve had to makeshift things because of the lack of adapted equipment for our students.
“They basically come out here in this space and run around. Rather than really engage with the equipment to build their strength, endurance, and independence, which is what we want.”
The school’s goal is to raise $600,000 and move the playground to the back of the school, farther away from the road. McCloskey said there are other benefits to having this space, aside from getting some fresh air.
“It’s an opportunity for them to enhance their gross motor, their fine motor skills, for them to have the experience of play,” she said. “Lots of our students, when they leave here, they’re going to outpatient treatment. Or their family structure doesn’t allow them time [to go to a playground]. Sometimes they don’t have a wheelchair accessible van to even get out of their house.
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“[This is about] the opportunity to get to a place like this. I do think it’s our obligation to provide as many experiences as we can to our student population as a whole, because if they did not have an intellectual development disability, they would have this. So, I think that’s what we owe them. To give them a space where they can play and experience joy and have fun, like every other child.”
The Gaudreau Family 5K run/walk will take place on May 31 at Washington Lake Park in Washington Township. The race itself has already been capped at 1,000 entrants, but still has a virtual option, for those who want to run the 5K remotely. Gaudreau has made a healthy competition out of seeing how many people she can enlist by next month.
“I have to laugh,” she said, “Because it’s almost been quite addicting. Every night I would take a picture of the number of entrants. So, the next day, I’d look and see how many people, and [compare the two].
“And I’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s this many.’ ‘Oh my gosh, it’s this many.’ And then we filled up. So, now we have to work on the virtual [side].”
It has given her joy at a time when there is not much to go around. Activities that used to be fun — going out to a restaurant, going on vacation — aren’t anymore. So, the Gaudreaus have stopped doing them. “We just feel guilty,” she said, “because it’s not fair that we can have fun when they can’t.”
But to their mother, this race feels like a shared experience; one that is in honor of her boys, to support a place that they loved. If the fundraising goal is met, she’ll watch as the playground is built, piece by piece, until next year, when she starts looking for her new project.
“I feel like it’s given me more of a purpose,” she said.