By Eileen Moon
RED BANK – On Sunday, Sept. 7, Stephy’s Place, a support center for grief and loss, will mark 10 years of serving those recovering from the death of a loved one by hosting a Walk of Remembrance and Healing.
The walk will take place at Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park in Long Branch.
Founded in 2015, the idea for the nonprofit traces its origins to a national tragedy that forever changed the lives of hundreds of Two River-area residents who lost husbands, wives and children in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
At that time, Sheila Martello was a young mother who had recently moved with her husband, James Martello, to Rumson. He worked in the World Trade Center in New York City while Sheila Martello took care of settling into their new home with their sons James Jr. and Thomas, who were 7 and 5 at that time. After Jim died in the attacks, Martello mourned alone, struggling to get through each day as a newly widowed, single parent.
When Kevin Keelen, then a priest at Holy Cross Parish in Rumson, suggested she join a support group for 9/11 widows that met at Holy Cross, Martello initially refused. (Keelen left the active priesthood in 2014. He now serves as a bereavement minister for Stephy’s Place.)
“I really had no desire to go sit with a bunch of strangers,” Martello recalled.
But with Keelen’s urging, she allowed herself to give it a try.
There she met other women whose spouses had also perished in the attacks. The group met every Tuesday. Their goal was a simple one: Make it from Tuesday to Tuesday.
In the end, the support group accomplished far more, becoming a lifeline to those who had experienced that unthinkable tragedy in the most devastatingly direct way. That shared support built strong bonds. The women continued to meet regularly for the next three years.
“It helped so much,” Martello said recently. “Those first three years had saved my life.”
Their closeness endures to this day.
Within that first year after her husband’s death, Martello had a vivid dream in which he came to her and said, “I am home, and I’ll wait for you. Take care of yourself and the boys.” That message brought her a profound sense of peace, knowing, she said, that “He would wait for me and I needed to live my life.”
The years that followed brought many changes. Several of the women remarried, including Martello, and, like Martello, had more children. Nicholas Preston, Martello’s third son, from her second marriage, is now 22.
A New Purpose
Fourteen years after 9/11, with her youngest entering his teens and her oldest off to college, Martello said, “I began to wonder what my purpose should be.”
About that time, Martello learned that her son’s hockey coach had a sister-in-law, Stephanie Hardman Kaminoff, suffering from Stage Four cancer. Martello reached out to the family to offer some kindness and support.
Kaminoff, a mother of three, asked Martello: “If you knew that you were going to die, what would you have done?”
Martello said she would definitely have planned more family time, and she would have had more pictures taken.
“I know that I am going home,” Kaminoff told her, “but it’s my family that needs the support.”
After her death, Kaminoff’s family received the support she wanted for them: her three children were adopted by one of her sisters, and the hard work of living with her loss went forward.
For Martello, Kaminoff’s words echoed the message her husband had given her in her dream. She began to consider the idea of establishing a support group for people in the deep waters of grief.
The idea was still percolating in the back of her mind when she attended a reunion lunch of the 9/11 widows who together had weathered their own storms. She said her goodbyes and was leaving the luncheon when she suddenly decided to turn back and ask these women what they thought of her idea.
They were immediately supportive. Elaine Chevalier, who had lost her son, Swede, in the World Trade Center attacks, offered space for a support group in the office building in Red Bank she had dedicated in his memory. Each of the women offered their support for Martello’s idea.
Today, the organization’s executive board includes Martello as president, Pat Wotton as vice-president and Trish Straine MacGregor as secretary. All three women lost their husbands in 9/11.
At that time, Martello said, there were few resources for grieving people that extended beyond six- or 12-week counseling or support sessions. “At 12 weeks (after her husband was killed), I don’t know if I was even taking a shower yet.”
The initial funding for Stephy’s Place came from the foundation Martello had established in her husband’s memory, which had previously underwritten a scholarship at his high school and paid to build a shelter at a YMCA camp he had attended.
Once Stephy’s Place opened its doors, it soon became apparent that it would need more than one room for meetings so they could establish separate groups for those who had experienced a similar loss – those grieving a suicide, those who had lost parents, parents who had lost children, husbands or wives who had lost their spouses.
To accommodate the additional groups, Elaine Chevalier allocated additional room for Stephy’s Place in the Chevalier building.
While the mission of Stephy’s Place doesn’t incorporate professional counseling – it is instead focused on peer support – the groups are led by facilitators who have direct experience with loss.
The purpose of the group is “companioning” members as they confront the realities of grief and loss. But as Stephy’s Place began to grow, Martello felt she needed some training in grief work to build a solid organization. “What was I taking on?” she remembers thinking. “I needed grief training.”
On a visit to her son’s college in Colorado, Martello discovered a potential resource: The Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colorado.
After contacting its director, Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D., a world-renowned specialist in grief issues, Martello enrolled in a workshop there. She was mentored by Wolfelt and is now a certified grief services provider and radical living coach.
Martello said she remembers asking Wolfelt if he would be willing to come to Stephy’s Place as a featured speaker should the organization survive 10 years. On Oct. 1, in an event open to the public, Wolfelt will be the featured speaker on grief and recovery. On Oct. 2, he will deliver a second talk for professionals and volunteers working in the field.
“Ten years later, we have 50 groups with over 500 people a week,” Martello said, providing peer support to the grieving community through weekly meetings in the Swede Chevalier building at 210 W. Front St., Red Bank.
This was accomplished with the commitment and support of the original group of women who came together in the darkest days of their lives.
The organization’s 10th anniversary is a moment of bittersweet irony. “If not for Sept. 11,” Martello said, “Stephy’s Place would not exist.”
Taking the wisdom they have gained through their own tragedies, the women who once gathered in grief have reached out to comfort and support others experiencing the most difficult losses life can present. They learn, said Martello, that they are not alone. They learn, as she did, that this happens to other people, too. They learn “that life is precious, and they need to be compassionate and empathetic, and to pay it forward.
The loss is not forgotten, but it is possible to walk forward, bearing both sorrow and joy, memory and hope, into the future.
“We don’t know what is going to be thrown in our path,” Martello said, “but we absolutely have a way to navigate it.
“We have a choice. We don’t have a choice in what happens to us, but we have a choice in how we navigate it.”
Sometimes, people ask her how she can be in such a sad place, but “it’s not a sad place,” Martello explained. “Something sad happened to them, but they are not destined to live a sad life.”
Registration for the Mourning Walk begins at 6 a.m.; the walk starts at 6:45 a.m. The cost to participate is $50. The annual event is the center’s only fundraiser. The remainder of its support comes via grants and donations.
More information on Stephy’s Place programs and events is available on the web at Stephysplace.org.
The article originally appeared in the September 4 – September 10, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
