METHUEN — Methuen High School guidance counselor Gary Dionne was a rock of support for students who needed help to stay in school, and he was even there for at least one student facing death.
The school district where Dionne spent his entire career was devastated to learn yesterday that he died Monday night, said Superintendent Jeanne Whitten.
"Nobody knows for sure at this point what the cause of death was," Whitten said. "There are a lot of assumptions, but I haven't been told definitively."
Dionne, a Derry, N.H., resident in his early 60s, was a school adjustment counselor in the special education department. He worked with kids who needed someone who understood their disabilities, Whitten said.
"He has done great work with so many kids," Whitten said.
Corinna Grasso is a parent who grew particularly fond of Dionne over the last three years or so. Dionne was a special education liaison for Grasso's son, Brett Wiegref, 18, who died from a disease April 29.
Wiegref could only attend school three to four hours each day because of fatigue, so Dionne helped set up accommodations for him, Grasso said.
Wiegref was a senior last year and Dionne, along with other faculty members from the high school, visited Wiegref at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston to give him a bedside graduation ceremony the day before Wiegref died, and he read Scripture at Wiegref's memorial service.
"And Gary was also very much supportive with the students and helping them cope with Brett's death," Grasso said. "These kids are really now being hit with this, so it's going to be difficult."
Dionne lost his wife to cancer, and then he lost his daughter to cancer a year later, Grasso said.
"I looked at him and said, 'Here's a man who has had so much tragedy in his life and yet he's still going,'" Grasso said. "Never complained. He was just like Brett."
"Gary was a warm and kind person and he always put himself out there for kids and was always supportive to his fellow staff," said Denise Oldham, a special education administrator who worked with Dionne and described him as a friend.
"I know he was not ill. He wasn't fighting anything, but I haven't gotten any firsthand information from his family," Oldham said.
Oldham said Dionne's family told the school they needed space while they grieve Dionne's death.
Teachers were informed of Dionne's death, then students were told and were given the opportunity to speak to school staff if they needed to, Oldham said.
"My father passed a year and a half ago and he was an unbelievable support to me," Oldham said.
Dionne had a caseload of about 40 students this year, and he would go the extra mile to help students inside and outside school, Oldham said.
"He was a great listener and he could reach kids that other people couldn't," Oldham said.
"He was a great member of our special education department. The kids loved him, the staff loved him," said Arthur Nicholson, the former Methuen High principal, who is now an assistant to Whitten charged with overseeing the renovation of the high school.
