Several hundred people gathered in the Ralph S. O’Connor Recreation Center at Johns Hopkins University Nov. 3 to mourn Miriam Frankl, a Hopkins student who died last month after being struck in a hit-and-run.

During the memorial service, classmates, faculty, friends and family honored Frankl by speaking about what she gave them during her brief 20 years.

“What I will miss most is not what she said or did, but how she made me feel,” said Anna Johnston, a senior at the university and Frankl’s assigned “big sister” at their sorority, Alpha Phi.

Anne Griffioen, a junior at the university, was Frankl’s roommate.

“When she agreed to live with me this year, I felt I had won the jackpot,” Griffioen said.

Frankl and Griffioen sometimes stayed up late chatting about boys, school, the past and the future, she said.

“Miriam was constantly wide-eyed and listening,” Griffioen said.

“You will always be with me, Miriam. Whenever I see something awkward or funny, I will hear you laughing,” she said.

Frankl, a junior at the university, was struck by a Ford F-250 on the afternoon of Oct. 17 in the 3500-block of St. Paul Street at University Parkway in Charles Village.

The next morning, Frankl died with her parents at her side.

A week later, police arrested Thomas Meighan, 39, at his home in Pikesville Oct. 24 and slapped him with nearly 20 charges related to the incident.
Among the charges was failure to stop at a red light, failure to stop at the scene of an accident, failure to provide aid to the victim, failure to produce identification, driving on a suspended license and driving the wrong way on a one-way street.

Meighan turned himself in Oct. 20 and spoke with investigators but was not charged at the time.

According to state court records, Meighan has four convictions for driving under the influence, going back to 1994.

In February, he was sentenced to three years in prison for driving under the influence, but that sentence was reduced to 18 months of supervised probation and he was recommended for a work-release program, according to court records.

At the time of Frankl’s death, Meighan was out on $100,000 bail, awaiting a Dec. 11 trial for 15 previous traffic violations, which largely mirror the charges against him in Frankl’s death.

Though Meighan’s fate is in limbo, Frankl’s was sealed.

Before the ceremony, one of the university’s all-men vocal performance groups stood outside in vests and ties, but they weren’t just at the ceremony to perform.

“We all knew her,” said one of the singers, though they didn’t want to talk to a reporter beyond that or identify themselves.
Mark Presnell, director of the school’s career center, where Frankl worked, thanked Frankl’s family for encouraging her to apply to Hopkins.

“Our lives were richer for it,” Presnell said.

At the Nov. 3 memorial service, Frankl’s aunt, Dr. Rebecca German, said that those gathered in the basketball gym to mourn her death were actually mourning two women.

German, a professor in the university’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, said she and others were mourning the Miriam they knew, as well as the Miriam they never had the chance to know.

“There is another woman we mourn today – the Miriam she would have grown into,” German said.

“We will never know all of what she would have become,” German said.

Frankl was from Wilmette, Illinois, according to a spokeswoman at Johns Hopkins.

An obituary in the Chicago Tribune said that Frankl was double-majoring in Spanish and cellular and molecular biology. Her parents are Rachel German and Bill Frankl. Her younger brothers are Joey and Aaron.

Funeral services for Miriam Frankl were Oct. 21 at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston, Ill., and she was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie.

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