Slain war widow buried in Portland beside husband

PORTLAND – A 25-year-old war widow who was slain by her estranged father now lies beside her husband in Evergreen Cemetery.

About 500 friends, relatives and members of Maine Army National Guard families turned out Saturday for the funeral of Lavinia Gelineau, who opposed the war in Iraq but never waivered in her support for U.S. troops sent there to fight.

Gelineau, who left her native Romania to study at the University of Southern Maine, was remembered as a courageous, vibrant and accomplished woman who touched the hearts of virtually everyone she met.

“She lived her life as the treasure she was,” said the Rev. Constantine Sarantidis of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church on Pleasant Street. He led the service, which was held at Woodfords Congregational Church to accommodate the crowd.

Gelineau’s 23-year-old husband, Army Sgt. Christopher Gelineau, was killed last April in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents just weeks before their second wedding anniversary. The two met in 2001 at USM.

An inseparable couple, they would kiss before and after every class. “He became all my family here,” she later said. “You know, my mother, my father, my husband, my best friend, everything.”

Through the depth of her grief, Gelineau brought the war home to Mainers in a personal way. “I went to bed on April 19 a happy woman with hopes and dreams,” she told an interviewer shortly before her death. “Then I woke up the next morning to nothing.”

She visited his grave almost daily to talk to him and sweep it clean of leaves and snow. Evergreen Cemetery also functions as a park where people walk and jog, and Gelineau said it made her sad to watch happy couples go by while she sat before Chris’ heart-shaped, red gravestone.

What started as a storybook romance took a final, tragic turn when Gelineau’s father, Nicolai Onitiu, strangled her with a rope in her Westbrook home before hanging himself.

Police said Gelineau’s parents had a history of domestic violence in Romania, and she had voiced concerns about her safety to friends before she agreed to allow her father to visit her in Maine.

In the celebration of her life, friends and family tried not to dwell on the circumstances of her death.

“I don’t even want to speak about the act that ended her life,” Sarantidis said at the service, in which he used the same Scripture readings he used at Chris Gelineau’s funeral.

Lavinia Gelineau graduated magna cum laude from USM last May with two bachelor’s degrees, which she earned in the four years it takes most people to earn one. At her commencement, she walked to the stage a third time to accept Chris’ posthumous industrial technology degree.

Although she publicly opposed the war, she attended the funerals of the other Maine soldiers killed in Iraq and comforted their grieving relatives. To those still fighting, she mailed a stream of packages filled with everything from shampoo to chocolate.

Two months ago, Gelineau became an American citizen in a private ceremony in Portland.

“She was very American, maybe more American than many of us,” said Maj. Andy Gibson, a National Guard chaplain who assisted in the funeral service.

Gelineau had become a cherished daughter to her in-laws, who live in Vermont, and at the time of her death she planned to attend graduate school to become a French teacher. But her grief over the loss of her husband remained.

Her mother-in-law, Victoria Chicoine, said she takes comfort in knowing that is no longer true.

“Lavi and Chris are part of each other for eternity,” Chicoine said. “She’s happy now.”