cuchulainn
November 12, 2003, 09:58 AM
from the Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2003/11/09/rallying_cry_for_a_fallen_teammate/Rallying cry for a fallen teammate
In tragedy's wake, grieving D.C. school takes up the anti-gun cause
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff, 11/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- On the high school football field, Daniel Thompson was the Big Man, a nimble, 6-foot-3-inch, 300-pound offensive tackle. He bulldozed Washington Monument-sized holes for running backs and helped his team win a city championship in the process.
Off the field, he was a gentle giant who lugged the groceries in for his mother and sometimes even did the dishes. His math scores were high. He addressed people as "sir" or "ma'am." He didn't do drugs. He got his girlfriend not one but four teddy bears for Valentine's Day. And candy. And flowers. He had no enemies. He never played with guns. He never joined a gang, and he certainly did not deserve to be shot and killed for a new pair of size 14 Nike shoes that no murderer's feet could ever fill. By all accounts, No. 73 deserved far better than that.
His life ended at age 19 after midnight on June 16. He was returning home from a quiet Sunday evening with his girlfriend. He lived just one stop away from her on the Metro. It ended with a robbery punctuated by gunshots that left a pool of blood on the Minnesota Avenue bridge in the city's northeast section. Just four days after his graduation from H.D. Woodson High School, Warrior No. 73 became homicide victim No. 98 of the year on the mean streets of the murder capital of the United States.
Thompson was not killed over money, according to police who are still seeking his assailants. He had none. He was robbed only of his smoke gray Nikes and a cellphone, which was used just once after the shooting. Shot dead, too, were his dreams to play football at Louisiana State University and to marry his high school sweetheart. After the tragedy, Woodson High School coach Greg Fuller decided to do something for the player he "loved like a son." So at halftime of a recent Friday afternoon game against Spingarn High School, he hosted "Coaches Against Gun Violence."
The program was started by Alliance For Justice, a D.C.-based nonprofit social justice group. It puts out a positive prevention message to area high schools through coaches, players, politicians, and social activists. Each program dedicates a game to a victim of gun violence.
The program is being met with widespread praise.
"As a coach, we teach a lot of players, we touch a lot of lives," says Fuller. "I want the players to spread the word in the schools and the community. This is senseless. We must stop gun violence."
Nine D.C. area high schools are hosting the program this fall, including Anacostia High School, which lost six athletes in one season to gun violence and 21 in a 25-year period.
The Woodson Warriors are devoting not just one game, but the entire 2003 season to Daniel Thompson. His locker stands intact. It contains his jersey, a photograph of him, and a news story about his death under a headline that reads, "We'll Miss You." Each player has a No. 73 sticker affixed to his helmet. Most players have No. 73 scrawled in black crayon on their cheeks.
"Today is very hard for me," Fuller says in the locker room before the game. "I knew Daniel since the seventh grade. He did everything a coach ever asked. At graduation I just told him, `Good luck, son,' and I told him I loved him. He said, `I love you too, Coach. Thanks for everything.' He had a chance of playing professional, but now we'll never know."
Poignant pregame scene
Ninety minutes before game time, Woodson cocaptain Kenneth McManus stops by Thompson's locker and bends on one knee, gently touching the photograph.
"He was a giant with the softest heart in the world," says McManus. "He cared about everybody. We had a relationship like brothers. I'm a single child and that was like my brother. And I miss him.
"When I found out he was killed, I was through. I didn't even want to play no more, but I knew he would not have wanted me to quit."
So he suited up with a new passion.
"Somebody's got innocent blood on their hands for a pair of sneakers," says McManus. "That don't make no sense, but that's how the world is today. The only way it's gonna stop is if we put our guns down."
An hour before the game, Fuller, a 15-year coaching veteran, gathers his team in the locker room to recite the Lord's Prayer, then adds a chant: "1, 2, 3, Daniel. 1, 2, 3, Championship."
Cocaptain Donta Herrod grabs jersey No. 73, straightens it on a hanger, and leads the Warriors out of the locker room and into the warm autumn sunshine. The players march silently to the goalpost like pallbearers. Today, there is no trash-talking or helmet butting. One player shimmies up the goal post and attaches the wire hanger to the crossbar. The players kneel and point to Daniel's jersey twisting in the breeze. No one says a word. When they start their pregame drills, a gust of wind picks up the jersey and it lands softly on the grass.
The players carry the jersey to a place of honor in the stands on the 50-yard line. Each has signed the jersey and written a message of love. In the appropriate space, there is a hand-drawn heart made by Thompson's sweetheart. "Love Forever, Tenesha," it says.
At game time, 300 people file in. Many wear purple ribbons to protest gun violence. The Woodson High School band has dedicated "Lean on Me" to Daniel.
Tenesha Beek has trouble sitting in the same stands where she watched her boyfriend's greatest triumphs. "I can't talk about him without crying," she says.
Daniel met Tenesha one year and 11 days before he died. Tenesha keeps track of such things. It was on a school field trip to the Smithsonian Institute. Tenesha found Daniel alone in the corner and asked him why he was always so quiet. He smiled. From that moment, they were inseparable. At Woodson High, they were chosen "Couple of the Year." At the end of the Turkey Bowl for the city championship last November, the PA announcer warned fans not to go on the field after the game. Tenesha hurdled the fence anyway. She bore down on Daniel like a middle linebacker with a clear path to the quarterback and hugged him. "I'm dirty, I'm sweaty," Daniel told her. "I don't care," she said.
Calls, but no answers
Daniel had received a scholarship offer from Alleghany College in Maryland and was getting feelers from other coaches. On what turned out to be the last weekend of his life, he told Tenesha that he wanted to play football at LSU. He started weeping. Tenesha held him and told him she'd be there for him. "Go, follow your dreams," she said. On that Sunday, Daniel spent a quiet night with Tenesha. He left just after 11 p.m. then returned. "I love you," he said. "Call me on my cellphone."
"I started hanging my clothes up and for some reason I felt something real funny," says Tenesha. "I tried to call him. The phone rang and rang. It wasn't like him not to answer his phone, so I thought he was maybe on the train. I waited a while and called again and still didn't get an answer. I left messages like, `Baby, I'm real worried about you, call me back,' and I never got a call.
"I waited until 3 a.m. and I went to sleep that night. I dreamt I saw him in a casket. I woke up and it was 5 a.m. and I was crying, and an hour later homicide called . . ."
Her voice trails off.
"He got shot in the chest and stomach and hand," she says. "They had TV [surveillance] cameras up there on that bridge but they didn't work."
A motorist saw the shooting from the interstate, got off at the next exit, and anonymously called 911 from a gas station. By that time it was too late.
"I think he bled to death," says Fuller.
Police released a description of the assailant as a slim black male with a light complexion in his late teens, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Police now say that probably more than one person was involved. They have no new leads and are asking witnesses to contact them or Fuller.
Police believe that Daniel didn't fight his attackers.
"It looks like he was complying," said Lt. Bill Farr of the Washington Metro Police. "It's unfortunte. It appears like he was a really nice kid. He was shot several times. Being such a big guy, they might have been intimidated by him."
Thompson was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m. at Prince George's Hospital Center. Killed for Nikes that would never fit a young punk.
"They were size 14 Nikes, they just took them off his feet," says Tenesha. "Who's going to fit in those shoes? A pair of shoes that couldn't fit and a cellphone they couldn't use. It's senseless. They cost like $150. They weren't Jordans. They weren't the kind of shoes you wait all night for the store to open up to buy. It doesn't make any sense."
Tenesha wears a picture of herself and Daniel on her blouse and she leans forward so her tears don't fall on it. There's an even bigger picture of the couple emblazoned on the back of her shirt. Tears flow quicker but her voice becomes stronger. She admits she's scared and sometimes slips into bed with her mother.
'Public health epidemic'
At halftime, the Woodson Warriors strip off their jerseys to reveal black "Coaches Against Gun Violence" T-shirts with the number 8 on them. McManus tells the crowd that eight young people are killed every single day in the United States by gun violence.
"Daniel was more than a statistic," he says.
Fuller implores the students, fathers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles in the stands: "Please, let's do this together. We need to cut the gun violence out." The applause that brings is louder than when the Warriors score a touchdown.
The Alliance for Justice says its program is an important first step.
"This is a public health epidemic," says Maria Feit, the deputy director for youth programs at the alliance. "If eight kids were dying every day from food poisoning from McNuggets, I think this country would be a lot more impassioned to take action and make that stop. We don't want this to happen in our schools."
She hopes the program will be expanded nationwide.
"Columbine showed us gun violence is not just for inner-city youths," she says.
Doretha Thompson, Daniel's mother, is a strong Christian woman. She said her only son never had any use for guns.
"I wouldn't let Daniel play with a toy gun when I was bringing him up," she says. "I didn't allow guns in the house. Period."
She used to talk to Daniel about all the violence on television.
"I'd watch TV and say, `That's not real life. In real life they get killed, they don't get up.' So now he's in a better place. There's too many young people getting killed. There's not enough mentors."
Those who do mentor young people are excited about the program.
"I think it's a great idea. I don't know another program like it," says Darryl Williams, who has done anti-violence mentoring for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. While he was playing football for Jamaica Plain High School in 1979, Williams was shot and paralyzed by a racially motivated sniper from a rooftop overlooking Charlestown High School's football field. "Sports can bridge the gap between the races. It shows the cohesiveness of what can happen when we work together. We need more mentoring in schools. It's a worthwhile program to cultivate, not just in D.C. but around the country and all around the world."
Former New Jersey Nets head coach (and Celtics assistant) Don Casey is a spokesman for "Coaches Against Gun Violence."
"Coaches are looking for some way to help their players," said Casey. "Coaches want safe havens. If you had 24-hour fitness centers where guys could take out their aggressions, that's better than using a gun. We know high school kids are scared, but you don't have to carry a gun because the other guy's got one. That's a lose-lose proposition. There's 25,000 gun deaths a year. We make access to guns too easy. They are too dangerous."
Casey's youngest son, Sean, died several years ago in a handgun incident. "You wouldn't think that happens to an NBA coach," he says.
There in spirit
Back on the football field, the Woodson Warriors are intimidating. They shut out Spingarn, 48-0. The players carry Daniel's jersey over to his mother. She hugs it like her boy is still in it.
McManus walks off the field happy.
"We played this one for him, so I made sure I would not miss any of my blocks," says the offensive lineman. "There was a lot of emotion. I was thinking about the funeral, but then I thought to myself, `Think of the good times.' I remember after he graduated, he said, `I wish I could come back there with you and get another championship.' `I told him, `I'm gonna get you another one,' and I'm gonna do it."
Coach Fuller hugs his players. When asked who the MVP is, he doesn't hesitate.
"Daniel," he says, pointing upward. "He scored 'em all. He scored every last one of 'em. His spirit is right here on this field."
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2003/11/09/rallying_cry_for_a_fallen_teammate/Rallying cry for a fallen teammate
In tragedy's wake, grieving D.C. school takes up the anti-gun cause
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff, 11/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- On the high school football field, Daniel Thompson was the Big Man, a nimble, 6-foot-3-inch, 300-pound offensive tackle. He bulldozed Washington Monument-sized holes for running backs and helped his team win a city championship in the process.
Off the field, he was a gentle giant who lugged the groceries in for his mother and sometimes even did the dishes. His math scores were high. He addressed people as "sir" or "ma'am." He didn't do drugs. He got his girlfriend not one but four teddy bears for Valentine's Day. And candy. And flowers. He had no enemies. He never played with guns. He never joined a gang, and he certainly did not deserve to be shot and killed for a new pair of size 14 Nike shoes that no murderer's feet could ever fill. By all accounts, No. 73 deserved far better than that.
His life ended at age 19 after midnight on June 16. He was returning home from a quiet Sunday evening with his girlfriend. He lived just one stop away from her on the Metro. It ended with a robbery punctuated by gunshots that left a pool of blood on the Minnesota Avenue bridge in the city's northeast section. Just four days after his graduation from H.D. Woodson High School, Warrior No. 73 became homicide victim No. 98 of the year on the mean streets of the murder capital of the United States.
Thompson was not killed over money, according to police who are still seeking his assailants. He had none. He was robbed only of his smoke gray Nikes and a cellphone, which was used just once after the shooting. Shot dead, too, were his dreams to play football at Louisiana State University and to marry his high school sweetheart. After the tragedy, Woodson High School coach Greg Fuller decided to do something for the player he "loved like a son." So at halftime of a recent Friday afternoon game against Spingarn High School, he hosted "Coaches Against Gun Violence."
The program was started by Alliance For Justice, a D.C.-based nonprofit social justice group. It puts out a positive prevention message to area high schools through coaches, players, politicians, and social activists. Each program dedicates a game to a victim of gun violence.
The program is being met with widespread praise.
"As a coach, we teach a lot of players, we touch a lot of lives," says Fuller. "I want the players to spread the word in the schools and the community. This is senseless. We must stop gun violence."
Nine D.C. area high schools are hosting the program this fall, including Anacostia High School, which lost six athletes in one season to gun violence and 21 in a 25-year period.
The Woodson Warriors are devoting not just one game, but the entire 2003 season to Daniel Thompson. His locker stands intact. It contains his jersey, a photograph of him, and a news story about his death under a headline that reads, "We'll Miss You." Each player has a No. 73 sticker affixed to his helmet. Most players have No. 73 scrawled in black crayon on their cheeks.
"Today is very hard for me," Fuller says in the locker room before the game. "I knew Daniel since the seventh grade. He did everything a coach ever asked. At graduation I just told him, `Good luck, son,' and I told him I loved him. He said, `I love you too, Coach. Thanks for everything.' He had a chance of playing professional, but now we'll never know."
Poignant pregame scene
Ninety minutes before game time, Woodson cocaptain Kenneth McManus stops by Thompson's locker and bends on one knee, gently touching the photograph.
"He was a giant with the softest heart in the world," says McManus. "He cared about everybody. We had a relationship like brothers. I'm a single child and that was like my brother. And I miss him.
"When I found out he was killed, I was through. I didn't even want to play no more, but I knew he would not have wanted me to quit."
So he suited up with a new passion.
"Somebody's got innocent blood on their hands for a pair of sneakers," says McManus. "That don't make no sense, but that's how the world is today. The only way it's gonna stop is if we put our guns down."
An hour before the game, Fuller, a 15-year coaching veteran, gathers his team in the locker room to recite the Lord's Prayer, then adds a chant: "1, 2, 3, Daniel. 1, 2, 3, Championship."
Cocaptain Donta Herrod grabs jersey No. 73, straightens it on a hanger, and leads the Warriors out of the locker room and into the warm autumn sunshine. The players march silently to the goalpost like pallbearers. Today, there is no trash-talking or helmet butting. One player shimmies up the goal post and attaches the wire hanger to the crossbar. The players kneel and point to Daniel's jersey twisting in the breeze. No one says a word. When they start their pregame drills, a gust of wind picks up the jersey and it lands softly on the grass.
The players carry the jersey to a place of honor in the stands on the 50-yard line. Each has signed the jersey and written a message of love. In the appropriate space, there is a hand-drawn heart made by Thompson's sweetheart. "Love Forever, Tenesha," it says.
At game time, 300 people file in. Many wear purple ribbons to protest gun violence. The Woodson High School band has dedicated "Lean on Me" to Daniel.
Tenesha Beek has trouble sitting in the same stands where she watched her boyfriend's greatest triumphs. "I can't talk about him without crying," she says.
Daniel met Tenesha one year and 11 days before he died. Tenesha keeps track of such things. It was on a school field trip to the Smithsonian Institute. Tenesha found Daniel alone in the corner and asked him why he was always so quiet. He smiled. From that moment, they were inseparable. At Woodson High, they were chosen "Couple of the Year." At the end of the Turkey Bowl for the city championship last November, the PA announcer warned fans not to go on the field after the game. Tenesha hurdled the fence anyway. She bore down on Daniel like a middle linebacker with a clear path to the quarterback and hugged him. "I'm dirty, I'm sweaty," Daniel told her. "I don't care," she said.
Calls, but no answers
Daniel had received a scholarship offer from Alleghany College in Maryland and was getting feelers from other coaches. On what turned out to be the last weekend of his life, he told Tenesha that he wanted to play football at LSU. He started weeping. Tenesha held him and told him she'd be there for him. "Go, follow your dreams," she said. On that Sunday, Daniel spent a quiet night with Tenesha. He left just after 11 p.m. then returned. "I love you," he said. "Call me on my cellphone."
"I started hanging my clothes up and for some reason I felt something real funny," says Tenesha. "I tried to call him. The phone rang and rang. It wasn't like him not to answer his phone, so I thought he was maybe on the train. I waited a while and called again and still didn't get an answer. I left messages like, `Baby, I'm real worried about you, call me back,' and I never got a call.
"I waited until 3 a.m. and I went to sleep that night. I dreamt I saw him in a casket. I woke up and it was 5 a.m. and I was crying, and an hour later homicide called . . ."
Her voice trails off.
"He got shot in the chest and stomach and hand," she says. "They had TV [surveillance] cameras up there on that bridge but they didn't work."
A motorist saw the shooting from the interstate, got off at the next exit, and anonymously called 911 from a gas station. By that time it was too late.
"I think he bled to death," says Fuller.
Police released a description of the assailant as a slim black male with a light complexion in his late teens, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Police now say that probably more than one person was involved. They have no new leads and are asking witnesses to contact them or Fuller.
Police believe that Daniel didn't fight his attackers.
"It looks like he was complying," said Lt. Bill Farr of the Washington Metro Police. "It's unfortunte. It appears like he was a really nice kid. He was shot several times. Being such a big guy, they might have been intimidated by him."
Thompson was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m. at Prince George's Hospital Center. Killed for Nikes that would never fit a young punk.
"They were size 14 Nikes, they just took them off his feet," says Tenesha. "Who's going to fit in those shoes? A pair of shoes that couldn't fit and a cellphone they couldn't use. It's senseless. They cost like $150. They weren't Jordans. They weren't the kind of shoes you wait all night for the store to open up to buy. It doesn't make any sense."
Tenesha wears a picture of herself and Daniel on her blouse and she leans forward so her tears don't fall on it. There's an even bigger picture of the couple emblazoned on the back of her shirt. Tears flow quicker but her voice becomes stronger. She admits she's scared and sometimes slips into bed with her mother.
'Public health epidemic'
At halftime, the Woodson Warriors strip off their jerseys to reveal black "Coaches Against Gun Violence" T-shirts with the number 8 on them. McManus tells the crowd that eight young people are killed every single day in the United States by gun violence.
"Daniel was more than a statistic," he says.
Fuller implores the students, fathers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles in the stands: "Please, let's do this together. We need to cut the gun violence out." The applause that brings is louder than when the Warriors score a touchdown.
The Alliance for Justice says its program is an important first step.
"This is a public health epidemic," says Maria Feit, the deputy director for youth programs at the alliance. "If eight kids were dying every day from food poisoning from McNuggets, I think this country would be a lot more impassioned to take action and make that stop. We don't want this to happen in our schools."
She hopes the program will be expanded nationwide.
"Columbine showed us gun violence is not just for inner-city youths," she says.
Doretha Thompson, Daniel's mother, is a strong Christian woman. She said her only son never had any use for guns.
"I wouldn't let Daniel play with a toy gun when I was bringing him up," she says. "I didn't allow guns in the house. Period."
She used to talk to Daniel about all the violence on television.
"I'd watch TV and say, `That's not real life. In real life they get killed, they don't get up.' So now he's in a better place. There's too many young people getting killed. There's not enough mentors."
Those who do mentor young people are excited about the program.
"I think it's a great idea. I don't know another program like it," says Darryl Williams, who has done anti-violence mentoring for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. While he was playing football for Jamaica Plain High School in 1979, Williams was shot and paralyzed by a racially motivated sniper from a rooftop overlooking Charlestown High School's football field. "Sports can bridge the gap between the races. It shows the cohesiveness of what can happen when we work together. We need more mentoring in schools. It's a worthwhile program to cultivate, not just in D.C. but around the country and all around the world."
Former New Jersey Nets head coach (and Celtics assistant) Don Casey is a spokesman for "Coaches Against Gun Violence."
"Coaches are looking for some way to help their players," said Casey. "Coaches want safe havens. If you had 24-hour fitness centers where guys could take out their aggressions, that's better than using a gun. We know high school kids are scared, but you don't have to carry a gun because the other guy's got one. That's a lose-lose proposition. There's 25,000 gun deaths a year. We make access to guns too easy. They are too dangerous."
Casey's youngest son, Sean, died several years ago in a handgun incident. "You wouldn't think that happens to an NBA coach," he says.
There in spirit
Back on the football field, the Woodson Warriors are intimidating. They shut out Spingarn, 48-0. The players carry Daniel's jersey over to his mother. She hugs it like her boy is still in it.
McManus walks off the field happy.
"We played this one for him, so I made sure I would not miss any of my blocks," says the offensive lineman. "There was a lot of emotion. I was thinking about the funeral, but then I thought to myself, `Think of the good times.' I remember after he graduated, he said, `I wish I could come back there with you and get another championship.' `I told him, `I'm gonna get you another one,' and I'm gonna do it."
Coach Fuller hugs his players. When asked who the MVP is, he doesn't hesitate.
"Daniel," he says, pointing upward. "He scored 'em all. He scored every last one of 'em. His spirit is right here on this field."
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.