[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 17 (Thursday, February 24, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: February 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
GETTING READY TO DIE YOUNG
______
HON. LOUIS STOKES
of ohio
in the house of representatives
Thursday, February 24, 1994
Mr. STOKES. Mr. Speaker, recently I read an article in the Washington
Post which caught my attention. It discussed a growing fear among our
Nation's children which demonstrated to me just how drastically the
times have changed. The article entitled ``Getting Ready To Die
Young,'' brings to our attention children, many under 12 years of age,
who are planning their own funerals. It is unfortunate that today's
youth are exposed to crime, drugs, and violence which infests their
communities and plagues American society. Many children have witnessed
family members dying a violent death, while others know of classmates,
friends, and neighbors who have been killed. As a result of their
environment, they conclude that death is imminent and, consequently,
plan for another of life's events--their own funeral.
The article states that children have prepared drafts of statements
for their mourners to say at their funeral. Students, not yet high
school age, have told family and friends how and where they want to be
buried, and what songs they want to be played while they lay in their
coffin. In my teenage years, I remember planning for my senior prom, my
high school graduation and my first day of college. These events to
which I, and so many others of us, so often looked forward, are also
the same events which we frequently recall with fond memories in our
older years. It is deplorable that our children, our Nation's greatest
resource, have given up hope for such memories. It is alarming that
here in our Nation's capital, and in cities throughout the United
States, students plan for their funerals with the same consideration as
one would plan for a wedding. Because I do not want the severity and
the magnitude of this issue to be overlooked, I believe that it is
important to share this article with my colleagues.
The article follows:
[From the Washington Post, Nov. 1, 1993]
Getting Ready To Die Young: Children in Violent D.C. Neighborhoods Plan
Their Own Funerals
(By DeNeen L. Brown)
Jessica Bradford knows five people who have been killed. It
could happen to her, she says, so she has told her family
that if she should get shot before her sixth-grade prom, she
wants to be buried in her prom dress.
Jessica is 11 years old. She has known since she was in
fifth grade what she wanted to wear at her funeral. ``I think
my prom dress is going to be the prettiest dress of all,''
Jessica said. ``When I die, I want to be dressy for my
family.''
In the last five years, 224 children younger than 18 have
been killed in the District either as targets of shootings or
as bystanders. The carnage has been taken in by children who
live close to the gunfire, such as Jessica, and by some
children removed from it.
As they've mastered Nintendo, double Dutch and long
division, some children have sized up their surroundings and
concluded that death is close at hand. So, like Jessica, they
have begun planning their funerals.
According to interviews with about 35 youths and adults who
work with them, children as young as 10 have told friends how
they want to be buried, what they want to wear and what songs
they want played at their funerals. Some young people dictate
what they want their mourners to wear and say they want their
funeral floral arrangements to spell out the names of their
favorite brands of clothing.
Jessica, a sixth-grader at Payne Elementary School and a
cheerleader at the Boys and Girls Club across the street from
her home near 17th Street and Massachusetts Avenue SE, has
heard gunfire as she walked to the grocery store. She has
seen a body on her playground.
``Most 11-year-olds think about their funerals all the
time,'' Jessica said, as she sat in her living room with her
mother and aunt. ``Most of my friends who are 11 live around
violence. When I die, I hope it won't be from violence. I
don't want to get shot.''
Community activists, social workers and psychologists who
have studied the effects on young people of living amid
violence say children who plan their own funerals are showing
that they do not expect to live long.
``It's strange to hear young kids talking about dying, but
that goes along with the times,'' said Sharon Brooks, 32, an
instructor at the Boys and Girls Club. ``For them to come
tell you someone was murdered the night before is just like
regular conversation.''
William W. Johnson, a former police officer who works with
youths in the District, said death is almost a daily reality
for some.
``It's happening around them. . . . These kids come home to
dope, guns and killing. We're living in a war zone,'' Johnson
said. ``They actually believe they are not going to be
around. If you look at the circumstances and the facts, they
have enough to think that way.''
According to the D.C. Department of Human Services, 50.8
percent of young people 15 to 24 years old who died in the
city during the last decade were victims of homicide. A
recent national report on violence and youth by the American
Psychological Association said teenagers are 2\1/2\ times as
likely to be victims of violent crimes as people over 20.
Douglas Marlowe, a psychologist at Hahnemann University
Hospital in Philadelphia, said children often become
fascinated with death during adolescence. Usually, he said,
young people romanticize death or read literature about death
in an effort to gain control over dying.
But Marlowe said planning a funeral is ``extremely
fatalistic'' and is not a normal part of adolescent
development. ``Once they start planning their own funerals,
they have given up. They are not trying to conquer death
anymore,'' he said. ``They are now turning themselves over.''
Jessica's mother and aunt said they were not surprised when
the 11-year-old started talking about her funeral because she
has known so many people who have died.
A year ago, the brother of former police chief Isaac
Fulwood Jr., Theodore, was killed three blocks from Jessica's
house. About a month later, Jessica's 21-year-old cousin,
Stanley Richard Hunter Jr., was killed. Two weeks after that,
Hunter's 18-year-old friend was slain in a drive-by shooting.
Then an elderly woman who lived three doors away from Jessica
was gunned down in her house because she had witnessed a
slaying and was to testify in the case.
With so much violence around her, Jessica's aunt, Wilma
Hunter, says she understands the girl's wish to be buried in
her prom dress.
``When I was growing up, we always expected to live,''
Hunter said. ``Now it's almost like they really can't be sure
they will live to be an adult when they see people dying
around them.''
Hunter works with mentally retarded children at a center in
Montgomery County. She has helped rear Jessica and her
sisters. She said her nieces have awakened at night crying
because they have dreams and visions about funerals.
Rona Fields, a psychologist who has studied children living
in war zones in Northern Ireland, the Israeli-occupied West
Bank, Beirut and Southeast Asia and in violent U.S. cities,
said she sees similarities in the way children react to
violence.
Fields said she has seen children in Palestinian camps
acting out burials, literally digging their own graves and
lying in the holes.
``The children who dig their own grave and put themselves
in it are not necessarily pathological; they are children
whose experience of the world is glorification of the victim
and the hero,'' Fields said.
Young people here who plan their funerals often fall into
two groups, according to adults who work with them. There are
``good kids'' who have seen many of their friends die
violently, and there are those who are involved in selling
drugs and think someone may be after them.
Howard Reed, 15, said he doesn't sell drugs and knows of no
one who is after him, but still he is not sure whether he
will live. He said he has escaped bullets at nightclubs and
is wary of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
``Things just go wrong in this world,'' he said. ``If
people don't like you or they don't like the way you walk or
talk, they are going to try to take care of it.''
Howard, a ninth-grader at Hine Junior High School, has told
friends that if he should die soon, he wants his funeral to
be ``different than everybody else's.''
``I don't want my hands like this,'' he said, folding them
across his chest. ``I want to be buried with peace signs. And
I don't want my funeral to be in a church. I want it at
Rollins Funeral Home, and I want to be buried at Harmony
[Memorial Park]. I want to wear sweats and tennis shoes. I
don't want to be buried in a suit.''
Howard's mother said she wants her son to be a lawyer when
he grows up. But she said it also is necessary to plan for
early death. She has talked with her children about the
possibility. ``I've told them life is nothing to be played
with,'' said Howard's mother, who did not want her name used.
``Bullets don't have any names. You can be anywhere and get
hit by a bullet.''
Alicia Brown, 14, an eighth-grader at Eliot Junior High,
lives near C and 17th streets SE, where her mother says
parents are afraid for their children to go to school.
Alicia, who wants to be a lawyer, said, ``I pray to God, I
hope I make it through this day. It seems like people are
just killing without thinking.
``One friend got killed, and he was just riding a bike. I
figured the bullet could have hit me. Sometimes, I picture my
funeral. Because when I go to a friend's funeral, I picture
myself. Things come in my mind. It could be me laying
there.''
``When her friends do die, I try to talk to her about it,''
said Alicia's mother, Isha Williams, 30, whose family owns a
photography studio. ``For a young mind, they are handling
death as casually as going to a movie now. For them, it's an
everyday thing.''
During Ericca Benton's senior year at McKinley High School,
four classmates were fatally shot. She started to think that
she wasn't going to make it, so she sat down one day and
began planning her funeral.
``On the top of the page, I wrote my name a couple of times
because I like to write my name,'' said Benton, now a 21-
year-old senior at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore.
``Then I wrote the songs I want sung. Then I wanted a tape of
me talking, telling everybody I'm all right. I'm real
dramatic, you know. But I was serious. Then I wrote who I
want to talk. . . . And I told my mother what to wear.''
She then sealed the envelope and gave it to her mother.
Some youths say they have rearranged their lives to avoid
death. ``You can't go to a club; it's like a death trap,''
said Raymond Rouse, 17, who lives near Ninth and O streets
NW. ``You are liable to get hit by a bullet or something.
Rich kids don't have to think about this. They keep talking
about stress. They haven't seen stress until they live out
here.''
Rouse and two friends, Cornelius Edmonds, 18, and Chris
Thomas, 17, grew up in a neighborhood where there are
frequent shootings. They said they think about death because
they see it so often. They knew Mustaffi ``Lucky'' Miller, a
16-year-old who was fatally shot two weeks ago. They knew
Leonard ``Stinkaman'' Cole III, also 16, who was killed in
1991 after a dispute with a rival gang.
Survival, they say, is a skill they have had to learn. They
are careful about offending, because ``if you did something
to somebody, somebody is going to get a `get-back'
[retaliation],'' Edmonds said.
The three say they think about death and accept it. ``If
it's your time, it's your time,'' Edmonds said. ``If somebody
is looking for me, I can't get nervous. If I know somebody is
trying to get me, I'm going to get them first.''
Rouse, who like many young people seems to believe he is
invincible, said: ``I ain't going to worry about it. If it
catches me it catches me.''
Thomas said he doesn't believe he's going to die, ``because
I'm just not going to let anybody kill me.''
They have dreams about getting out of the neighborhood,
marriage and manhood.
Edmonds, who said he just got out of jail for doing
something ``stupid,'' wants to be a computer engineer. His
friends laughed at him because he doesn't have a computer.
Rouse wants to move to Virginia and sell real estate.
Thomas wants to get a job that makes money. ``If I had some
money, I would be gone,'' he said. ``I would go down to
Florida.''
Rouse looked at Thomas curiously. ``They kill people down
there,'' he said. ``You ain't seen the news?''
Their dreams are cut short by not knowing how long they
will survive the neighborhood. ``I've said when it happens to
me,'' Edmonds said, ``I want them to sing at my funeral, you
know, that new song on the radio, `This Is to My Homeys.'''
The song is actually titled ``Gangsta Lean.'' It is a
ballad by a group called DRS about young men dying. It was
the most-requested song recently at WPGC-FM radio. The video
version shows a boy's body propped up in a coffin in the
``gangsta lean.''
Many of the young people interviewed said they can relate
to the song's lyrics:
``This song is dedicated to my homeys in that gangsta lean.
Why'd you have to go so soon? It seems like yesterday we were
hangin' 'round the hood. Now I'm going to keep your memory
alive like a homey should.''
Although many teenagers say they fear dying, death has
become honored in some communities, said David Arnett, 32,
the manhood training coordinator at Union Temple Baptist
Church in Southeast Washington.
``Just as the lives some of the youngsters lead have been
glorified, those who die in that life have been glorified as
well,'' Arnett said.
Arnett said that when he hears his students talking about
their funerals, he interrupts quickly.
``I try to interject, `You know how you want to die. How do
you want to live?''' Arnett said. ``I say, `Would you
consider planning your life as well as you plan your
death?'''
____________________