Summary: Need help with PR? If you are looking for a great PR firm, you've found one. Walker Sands is a leading Chicago PR firm with a strong track record that makes it one of top national PR agencies..

The memory of Anthony McGrath, a Plymouth teenager shot by police after an alleged robbery attempt in January, lives on -- online.
(article continues below useful links)

 As others have for a growing number of teens who died young, McGrath's friends and family have established a memorial Web page at MyDeathSpace.com. It features a newspaper article about his death and photos: one of him offering a sly smile as he lounged on a living room couch, the other at his funeral as he lay, wearing a Patriots jersey, in a casket, a bundle of red roses across his stomach.

There's also an online discussion board with comments that range from commiserat ive to cutting. Some rail against police officers. Others are sympathetic. ``No one deserves to die like this," reads one.

Linked to the site is ``R.I.P. Tony," a memorial MySpace page created by Denise McGrath, the teenager's mother. That private tribute -- which can be viewed only with e-mail authorization -- has a slide show, profile, and comment board. The two websites are not affiliated, but links to MySpace profiles are available on MyDeathSpace.com.

``It's just a place for his friends to go," explained Denise McGrath.

Such online tributes are reshaping the way many people deal with death. Web eulogies, tributes, and memorials -- offered by such sites as MyDeathSpace.com, Legacy.com, Memory-Of.com, and the popular social hangout MySpace.com -- are an accessible and therapeutic way for people to remember deceased friends and relatives.

Talking and reminiscing about loved ones can help ``normalize" the experience of death, explained Beth Loomis, a chaplain and bereavement coordinator at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth.

``It brings hope back that there will be a time when the pain will not be so intense, that it will soften, " she said.

Visiting the sites is like walking through a graveyard -- except they go way beyond moss-lined headstones and one-line epitaphs. There are home videos with narration by relatives; pictures of smiling and goofing faces, embraces and piggyback rides; poetry and tragic goodbyes.

``It's another example of the Internet transforming our society," said Hayes Ferguson, chief operating officer of Legacy.com, an obituary site that allows visitors to post comments in guest books and create bio pages and memorial videos. ``These are new ways of grieving that didn't exist before."

Legacy.com moving tributes cost $29 and stay online indefinitely; guestbook entries attached to obituaries, meanwhile, are free and expire after 365 days. Guestbooks and obituaries are made available through affiliations with 300 newspapers across the United States. After a year, they can be found through newspaper archives.

Profile pages on MyDeathSpace.com are also free. Deaths are submitted by guests and stay online indefinitely. Both websites edit entries for content.

Many of the deceased featured on various sites have young faces. They are teenagers or twenty-somethings who have died suddenly and often tragically.On MyDeathSpace.com, for instance, almost all of the victims died as the result of car crashes, suicides, homicides, or accidents. McGrath -- whose shooting death was ruled justifiable by the Plymouth district attorney on grounds that police feared the 16-year-old was trying to run them over -- is one of those.

Michael Kelley, a 26-year-old National Guardsman from Scituate who was killed last June at a military base in Afghanistan, is remembered on Legacy.com.

Kelley's brother Shawn created a ``moving tribute" on the site; the 60-second video features a slide show of Michael as a mop-topped toddler and a clean-cut teen, with subdued classical music and narration about the young man's attributes and interests.

Those who visit the site find out that Kelley was an artist and a poet who had a knack for prose. A goof, in the endearing sense. He was caring, loved kids. Handsome, with intense blue eyes. He played video games, ice hockey, soccer.

Shawn Kelley created the moving tribute and a bio page on Legacy.com during the week of his brother's funeral to organize his thoughts and memories.

``It made me feel good to be able to talk about my brother," he said.

Today, he still watches the video periodically and clicks through the 19 pages of messages on the online guest book. They're signed by friends and family from as far away as Colorado and are filled with anecdotes about times shared with Michael -- eating popcorn and watching the ``Willy Wonka" remake, attending Little League practices and swimming lessons as kids.

Kelley finds them comforting. He has read every one. ``It makes me proud," he said.

Mike Patterson, a 25-year-old paralegal from San Francisco, created MyDeathSpace.com in December as a similar sanctuary for grieving relatives. The catalyst? Heart-rending newspaper stories, he says. He wanted to memorialize younger people to help prevent similar deaths. The site gets 50,000 to 100,000 hits per day, he said.

``Leaving messages and comments for a fallen friend on their MySpace profile seems like group therapy," he said in an e-mail.

Many of those who remember McGrath, and the investigation into Plymouth police conduct that followed his death, agree that they found solace online.

McGrath's 13-year-old sister, Kerri, often posts on the memorial MySpace page set up by her mother. She described her brother as laid-back, active, and protective of his family -- especially his little sister.

McGrath's cousin, 16-year-old Briana Knight, posts on the site occasionally; she said the pictures and comments usually make her cry. But they also bring back good -- albeit bittersweet -- memories of a cousin she describes as a rebel with a good heart.

``I always feel," she wrote in an e-mail, ``like Tony can read what I say."

Copyright © 2006. Boston Globe.