Wayland woman leaves lasting legacy after fatal crash

WAYLAND, Mass. (WHDH) -- A Massachusetts woman is leaving a lasting legacy after a tragic car accident last week. Marina Keegan was with her boyfriend just days after their graduation from Yale when their car crashed, killing Keegan.

Flowers and condolences graced the front steps of the Wayland home where Marina Keegan lived with her brothers and parents. She died in a car crash on Cape Cod last weekend. Her promising future was crushed just one week after graduating from Yale.

Her English teacher at Buckingham Brown and Nichols, where she spent her early school years, remembers Marina as a vibrant gifted writer whom everyone knew was going places.

“She was a very remarkable kid. She was a kid who really liked both people and ideas,” said Brian Staveley, Keegan’s former teacher. “Her interests were very wide-ranging and she was just somebody who was curious about the world, excited about the world and the people in it.”

The 22-year-old had already been published in the New York Times but it is her final words in the Yale Daily News that have gone viral. There were more than 700,000 hits on her last essay telling her peers it's never too late to start something new, and that they have their whole lives ahead of them.

“It’s sad that she didn’t get to write more,” Staveley said.

At the First Parish Church in Wayland, her parents are planning the funeral service they say is open to anyone who wants to celebrate Marina's life. It will be held Saturday -- the same day she should have been moving into her New York apartment and starting a new job with The New Yorker.

Keegan’s boyfriend was driving car when he lost control, hit a guardrail, and it flipped over. Keegan was pronounced dead at the scene.