Philly Moms Find Brotherly Love By West Rock

A group of moms from Philadelphia walked a brick pathway lined with the names of hundreds of New Haven victims of gun violence — to take solace in the tranquil Valley Street garden, and to find inspiration in how to build a similar memorial in their own home city.

Four mothers from southwest Philadelphia took those steps alongside the four mothers from New Haven who created the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence on the west side of the city. 

The Philly mothers visited New Haven this past weekend to get tips on how they can take a page from New Haven and memorialize their own children and other victims of gun violence back home. 

New Haven moms Pamela Jaynez, Marlene Miller-Pratt, Celeste Robinson Fulcher, and Damonne Jones were the core group of mothers who organized and fought for the development of Valley Street garden starting back in 2016. All four were present on Saturday to lead the Philly group, as well as moms from Bridgeport, on a tour of the garden.

Since the opening of the memorial, the New Haven moms said, they and other local families have visited the space daily to remember their loved ones in a peaceful West River-bordered setting that is separate from a cemetery. 

The four Philadelphia mothers connected with the New Haven group in an effort to bring a similar non-cemetery healing place to families like theirs in the City of Brotherly Love.

The Philly group on Saturday included Terrez McCleary, Johndell Gredic, Shonda McClellan, and Danielle Shaw-Oglesby. 

While remembering their own lost loved ones, the group spoke about how peaceful New Haven’s memorial garden felt — and, under Miller-Pratt’s guidance, they put pencil to paper to sketch out what they would like a similar Philadelphia space to look like.

“I feel my baby here,” Shaw-Oglesby said with eyes closed while listening to the flow of the river and remembering her own daughter Dominique, who was shot and killed in West Philadelphia at age 23 in 2018. ​“She’s telling me this is the perfect thing.”

“I know for a fact [that a garden] will be a comfort,” added Gredic as she thought back to her son Nacear, who was shot and killed in Philadelphia at age 20 in 2015.

“Today was a great day,” said Miller-Pratt, the visionary behind the Valley Street garden whose 20-year-old son Gary Kyshon ​“Ki Ki” Miller was shot and killed in 1998 on South Genesee Street. ​“Two cities uniting to combat gun violence,” Miller-Pratt said. ​“Uniting to bring change.”

In Philly, "We Would Need Five Of These Paths For 1 Year"

The Philadelphia and New Haven mothers walked the path reading the names of victims and their ages aloud. 

“Thirteen years old, how sad is that,” Terrez McCleary said while wiping away her tears. ​“Jasmine Booze,” the group read aloud, remembering a five-year-old who was shot and killed in 1992. ​“Jessie Council,” they said, remembering a 16-year-old who also died from gun violence that same year. 

They discussed the rises and declines of yearly homicides, pointing out years like 1984, which had only one reported gun violence homicide victim, while 1979 listed 11 victims.

“What was happening then?” Danielle Shaw-Oglesby asked.

While looking at the number of gun violence victims in recent years and particularly during the peak of the Covid pandemic, the mothers suggested that ​“crime skyrocketed” because of the release of individuals who were incarcerated during the pandemic.

For this year so far, the garden organizers have had four memorial bricks laid and still have another four to go to have all eight homicides memorialized at the garden. (Since the moms took this walk on Saturday, yet another New Havener, 61-year-old Mark Pappacoda, was shot and killed in Fair Haven.)

New Haven’s number of gun violence victims, however, pales in comparison to the number of people killed in Philadelphia so far this year.

As of September of this year, Philadelphia, which has a population that is roughly 12 times larger than New Haven’s, has seen 400 people killed. Last year, the city had a record-breaking 562 murders.

“It’s so bad we would need five of these paths for one year,” Shaw-Oglesby said.

While walking down the park’s memorial pathway, Bridgeport mother Nicole Mathews described the garden as ​“beautiful but so disturbing.”

Miller-Pratt gave the mothers a tour of the garden, pointing to its outdoor lecture-style classroom, a memory wall full of phrases that describe the victims, a tree of life, a sculpture, and benches along the West River. 

Miller-Pratt told the Philadelphia moms that the local organizers plan to next get a bridge built that will connect the garden to the adjacent West Rock walking trail. 

“This is when it gets a little happier,” Miller-Pratt said leading the mothers from the brick pathway to the memory wall. 

She told the mothers that the garden is meant to elicit a variety of emotions and spread awareness of gun violence to not only families directly impacted, but also the entire community.

The mothers read quotes on the memory wall like ​“Their personality touched our hearts and that will forever give us great pride and strength” and ​“Did a lot for the community.” They smiled at the reminders of their children. 

“The smell of nature feels good,” Shaw-Oglesby said. 

In South Philadelphia, the mothers are members of a survivors group called Moms Bonded By Grief.

The organization, founded by Terrez McCleary, has hosted community gatherings to raise awareness of gun violence and provide support to families who have lost loved ones. They have also organized photo displays of their children’s faces throughout the city to remind the community that gun violence can affect anyone. 

“It’s sad but it’s great that we have each other to get through,” Shaw-Oglesby said.

After Saturday’s tour, the mothers spoke candidly about what it’s like being in a such a support group and how difficult it is to celebrate the holidays after their losses. 

“Sometimes your family and friends don’t understand,” McCleary said. 

“These are my family,” Shaw-Oglesby said.

The mothers described New Haven’s garden as peaceful and refreshing. 

"The Holiday Season Is Hard"

As the winter holiday season approaches, the group of mothers shared about the difficulty that comes with celebrating without their child. ​“The holiday season is hard,” Nicole Matthews said. 

Bridgeport native Nicole Mathews joined the gathering Saturday to connect with more mothers like herself. 

Mathews lost her son Shaahyid Mathews at 18 years old and has since founded the nonprofit Tears to Triumph in his memory.

While visiting the garden, Mathews said, she was reminded of memories of her son, who aspired to become a rapper. 

This year, Matthews put up a Christmas tree for the first time in 16 years after losing her son.

“I didn’t want to but it was for my grandkids,” she said. ​“I cant keep being the mother of a deceased child.”

Shonda McClellan gives out Thanksgiving baskets to fellow community members who have lost loved ones to gun violence. Last year she distributed 50 baskets. This year she will give out 25 and host a Christmas gathering for families in need. 

“I’m not ready to cook because I lost my child right before Thanksgiving,” McClellan said. 

She described the holiday tradition as a part of her ​“healing process.”

Matthews’ organization supports families who have lost a child not just to gun violence, but also to other tragedies like suicide and drug overdoses. 

She provides ​“after care” to those families through brunch gatherings, spa days, health and wellness raffles, and weekend retreats. 

Many of the mothers who gathered on Valley Street Saturday said their loss was the first tragic death their family had experienced. They also said their losses have affected not just them. 

“I’ve seen my dad just deteriorate,” McClellan said. ​“My family can’t come over to my house because there’s photos of her in the house.” 

"Sketch What You Want To See"

“I’m going on five years, and I still haven’t gotten past that day,” Shaw-Oglesby said, and was met with nods of agreement from the other mothers. 

“Everyday it’s like I get to the top of ladder and fall right back back down,” Matthews said.

Matthews said her son’s alleged killer was a close friend of his that he would sneak into her home to give him a place to eat and sleep daily. She said years after the loss of her son, that same person who allegedly took his life messages her other son who was nine years old at the time and threatens to ​“take care of him like he did his brother if he has a problem,” she said. 

“What the hell did I do to you and why did you hate me so much that you wanted to inflict me with so much pain?” Shaw-Oglesby asked. 

After Saturday’s garden tour and conversations about their personal experiences, the New Haven mothers provided the Philly moms with canvases to draw out what they want a memorial garden in Philadelphia to look like. 

“Close your eyes. Think of how you felt being here. Sketch what you want to see,” Miller-Pratt said. 

Shaw-Oglesby sat on a bench listening to the flow of the West River nearby. 

On the canvas, Shaw-Oglesby penciled a memorial garden with a pathway of bricks engraved with names as well as a wall also engraved with victims’ names. 

“The smells and sounds of nature sooth me,” Shaw-Oglesby said while adding roses bushes to her canvas garden. She added that the wall engraved with names would be a fountain that flows a constant stream of water.

Typically Shaw-Oglesby finds peace in her home garden or while sitting on her back porch overlooking her garden foliage, she said. As an artist, Shaw-Oglesby said, she finds peace in music.

She added that she hopes for the garden back home in Philadelphia to have jazz music playing at the park. 

It’s been four years since Shaw-Oglesby’s daughter Dominique Oglesby was killed at 23 years old in West Philadelphia on March 18, 2018. 

Dominique was Shaw-Oglesby’s oldest child. She died a month before she was set to graduate from Penn State University with honors. She described her daughter as helpful, beautiful, and smart. 

Dominique was majoring in communications and had plans to work in California for a public relations firm that had been seeking her out since her sophomore year, her mom said.

Shaw-Oglesby recalled her daughter telling her: ​“I’m bout to get you that big house, mom, because I’m going to be making those big bucks.” 

During the weekend visit Shaw-Oglesby walked the garden with a necklace pennant picturing her and her daughter while wearing a knee brace due to suffering from Lupus and Graves’ diseases. 

Since the loss of her daughter, Shaw-Oglesby said, her own health has declined. ​“When you’re dealing with grief it takes a toll on your body,” she said. ​“Grief works from the inside out.”

She said after her daughter’s death, she no longer had the daily support from her daughter who would join her for every single doctor’s appointment. 

“She was my best friend and took care of me” she said. ​“When she was taken I kind of fell back and gave up.” 

Since her daughters death, Shaw-Oglesby has provided high school seniors in her community with $500-$1,500 scholarships through a fund honoring Dominique. 

The mothers agreed that they often don’t have to tell each other what they’re feeling because they have an unspoken bond through their trauma. 

Each sketch made by the mothers had a wall of engraved names with a water fountain in common. 

Terrez McCleary lost her 21 year old daughter Tamara Johnson in 2009. At the time Johnson was a community college student with the goal of becoming a nurse. Johnson also had a 2‑year-old daughter whom McCleary now has custody over. McCleary’s granddaughter will turn 16 years old this December. 

McCleary also drew a memorial wall in her garden that she said could be black with a waterfall stream to replicate the West River’s musical water flow. 

She drew solar-operated lamp posts on the side of the wall into her plan to reflect off the wall of engraved names. 

“Philly is always crying about money so my plan is cost efficient,” McCleary said. 

The mothers added that they hope to have the garden in a high traffic area for many people to see. 

While in the garden Saturday, McCleary said she ​“faded away” and briefly forgot about her sadness and instead was overwhelmed with happy memories of her daughter.

Back home she said she doesn’t have a peaceful place to remember her daughter, so she instead stays busy daily.

In September 2017, McCleary founded Moms Bonded By Grief. 

Upon arriving back home in Philadelphia, McCleary said she plans to take the group’s ideas to her work supervisor who is an artist in hopes of having the four mothers’ ideas combined into one design. 

McCleary said the New Haven garden was comforting and, for once, her heart didn’t feel heavy. 

On Saturday, the Philadelphia and New Haven mothers described each other as a ​“new family” that makes them feel comfortable and not judged. 

“Everywhere else I feel out of place or like I don’t belong,” McCleary said. ​“With them I know that they’re not judging me because they understand me.” 

The Moms Bonded By Grief group has 20 members. Eighteen of those members are mothers who have lost children and two of them are community supporters. 

“People have assumptions that because it’s been 13 years, I shouldn’t be stuck anymore,” McCleary said.

Shonda McClellan said she looks forward to a Philly memorial garden to help parents like herself have a less overwhelming place to remember their lost ones besides a cemetery. 

“The wall will never let their name die,” McClellan said. 

She agreed that the garden should be near water or have a water fountain to replicate the ​“the calmness of moving water.” 

While visiting the garden this past weekend, McClellan wore a shirt displaying the face of her 17-year-old daughter, Erica Shonte McClellan, who died days before she could take her high school graduation photos on Nov. 12, 2017.

McClellan’s shirt pictured an edited picture of Erica’s face in a black cap and gown that she never had the chance to wear as the Class of 2018. 

McClellan hasn’t gotten a grave headstone for her daughter yet because it will serve as a difficult and permanent reminder of her loss, she said.

The Mother’s Day after her daughter passed, McClellan was gifted the edited photos of Erica in her cap and gown by family. 

McClellan said she had once written her own obituary and attempted to take her own life after the loss of her daughter. But her support group takes care of her and acts like a ​“no judgement zone.” 

Now McClellan said she gets triggered with her daughter’s memory by seeing graduation photos, prom pictures, or by hearing her daughter’s favorite music. 

Like the other mothers, McClellan said holidays are hard for her to get through without missing her daughter. ​“I don’t want to celebrate Thanksgiving. I don’t want to do Christmas, but I can’t cheat him,” she said about her 11-year-old son.

She described herself as numb and feels she’s often wearing a mask for the sake of her son. 

“I’m in a thousand pieces no matter how strong I look,” she said. 

Johndell Gredic also added a waterfall to her garden drawing. ​“Water is healing,” she said. 

While at the garden, Gredic said she felt refreshed by not having to think about anything. She said the garden also called to mind happy memories of her 20-year-old son Nacear Gredic, who was shot and killed on May 25, 2015. 

“Being out here doesn’t put me in that mindset of my remembering that my son was murdered or the depression,” she said. 

She described her son as funny and an old soul. When Nacear passed he left behind four children, one of whom Gredic now has full custody of.

Before his death, Nacear was a full-time father who was attending dental school and loved to play basketball.

After Nacear was killed, Gredic said she grieved by not thinking of her son as dead but instead as incarcerated. That’s what she would tell herself to get through the days, she said. 

“I was going to the cemetery everyday and in the middle of night just to see if it was true,” she said. 

Like McClellan, Gredic struggled to get a headstone for her son, and once putting down a deposit, she went back dozens of times to get a refund. 

Two years ago is when Gredic got the headstone for her son who would have been 25 at the time.

What she described as a ​“healing sanctuary” Gredic said would also help to connect survivors with other survivors. 

After the tour of the garden, the mothers had lunch and met at one of Yale’s libraries to talk through next steps for the Philadelphia plan.