Towanda Kellam carried a framed picture of her 15-year-old son, Lance
Hartgrove, who was murdered on July 10, 2012.
Thousands of mothers gathered in Dorchester Sunday morning to share one
message: peace is possible.
That is the rallying cry of Tina Chéry, whose 15-year-old son was killed by
gang crossfire days before Christmas 1993, and the message that she, the other
mothers, and thousands more supporters spread using chants, signs, and shirts at
the 18th annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace.
As Chéry marched down Washington street surrounded by an estimated 10,000
supporters, she said the size of that crowd sent a message.
“It means that concept and vision of one Boston -- people really do care,”
said Chéry, who founded the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in her son’s memory
and organizes the Mother’s Day walk each year.
“There’s more people working for peace than the small percentage that are
doing the violence,” she said.
Chéry marched beside mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, fathers, brothers,
and friends of those lost to violence.
Layah Quilt’s boyfriend Brandon A. John, 18, was Boston’s second homicide
victim of 2014, shot several times on quiet Rowe Street in Roslindale on Jan.
9.
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Quilt, 17, who had been
dating John for just under one year.
“It’s been really stressful,” Quilt said before admitting that she couldn’t
find words to express her feelings.
The crowd included Denise Richard, whose 8-year-old son Martin died in the
Boston Marathon bombings, and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was
among 20 children and six adults killed in December 2012 in the Sandy Hook
Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn.
At the walk’s end, Lewis stood arm in arm with Chéry in the Fields Corner
neighborhood’s Town Field Park, watching the marchers return to their starting
point. Lewis said she reached out to Chéry in her grief during the months that
followed the school shooting.
In the company of Chéry and other mothers who have lost children, Lewis said,
she feels at home.
“This is where I want to be,” she said. “These are my people: other mothers
who’ve lost children to senseless violence.”
Lewis, who founded the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation to spread a message
of peace, walked Sunday alongside her mother, Maureen Lewis, and 13-year-old son
J.T.
Coming to Boston for the march was her Mothers Day gift, she said.
“This feels very hopeful,” she said of the march. “It’s so amazing to see the
energy today surrounding this peace process.”
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