Living the mission: Colin’s Joy Project
By Vicki-Ann Downing ’21G
Colin Thomas McGrath, the son of Kerri Palamara McGrath, M.D. ’02 and her husband, Brendan, was killed in July 2018, a month shy of his third birthday. He was on his way home with his nanny and his 4-year-old sister, Sloane, after an afternoon at the park when a van jumped the curb and struck his stroller as it was being pushed along a sidewalk in South Boston.
Colin, a child with blond curls, laughing eyes, and “a hilarious little voice,” also was the grandson of Tom Palamara ’77, the first women’s hockey coach at PC, and Marjorie Hall Palamara ’78.
Kerri and Brendan were buoyed in their grief by support from family, friends, and strangers. To honor Colin’s legacy, they teamed with The Boston Foundation to create the nonprofit Colin’s Joy Project and “continue to weave joy into the lives of others as Colin did” by enhancing play spaces and funding family-focused programming in the Boston area.
Since 2018, Colin’s Joy has worked with Boston Parks and Recreation, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Restoration, and other nonprofits to create and improve indoor and outdoor play spaces in the community. They also have provided more than $1.3 million in grants to community partners through donations and fundraising. They have supported book clubs to increase family literacy, grocery and diaper donations to families, summer camp and afterschool programs, family bereavement programs at hospitals, and grief camps for families to learn to play and laugh again after loss.
Kerri McGrath, who studied biology and played softball at PC, is a primary care general internist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She ran her first Boston Marathon in 2019 to raise money for Colin’s Joy Project and will do so again by running the New York City Marathon in November 2024.
“There is one constant we appreciate as we navigate these waves. We know Colin lived every day to the fullest, reminding us of our quest with Colin’s Joy Project, to live each day with pure joy in our hearts,” Kerri and Brendan wrote in their latest newsletter to the Colin’s Joy Project community.
