In grieving her son, Sharra Wimberly found that writing about him helped her heal.
Her only child, D’Andre Rhone was shot and killed in Garfield Heights in 2021, at the age of 28.
“When he was taken away from me there was a part of me that was empty,” Wimberly said. “And I didn’t really have a place to talk to anyone about what I was feeling so I started to journal.”
Wimberly is one of 20 family members who shared stories about losing a loved one to homicide in the book “Write the Vision: Life Beyond the News Snippet.” The series of workshops that led to the book offered the authors a space to share more about their family members than what people may have seen on the news.
“A lot of the families when they were writing the stories, it caused them to dig deep to come up with something that they wanted to remember about them,” said Yvonne Pointer-McCreary, who published the book with Jaccqueline Payne. “Other than just the way that they died.” Pointer-McCreary’s daughter, Gloria, was murdered in 1984. Since then she has worked to support other family members healing from violence.
Four families share the stories they wrote
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‘That wasn’t the last thing I wanted you to know about my child’
Last month, at a conference put on by Pointer-McCreary, some of the book’s co-writers talked about why they agreed to contribute to the book, and how they felt after writing about their loved one.
Wimberly said that a Google search for her son’s name brings up headlines about how her son died.
“That’s all you see, and that wasn’t the last thing I wanted you to know about my child,” she said. “D’Andre … he lit up a room when he walked in. He was very talented. He loved to sing. He loved to dance.”
D’Andre was a father to a one-year-old and his wife was expecting their second child when he was killed.
“I wanted them to know what their father was like,” Wimberly said. “They’ll have an opportunity to read this book at some point in their life and see the joy that he brought to others and just know the human being that he was and not about his tragedy.”
Michelle A. Kenney wants her sister, Nichole Annamaria Kenney McCorkle, to be remembered as the family’s nurse and caretaker. Nichole was enrolled in Tuskegee University’s nursing school before she was killed.
“She has six grandchildren now, and I want them to read something about their grandmother that they can say, ‘Wow! My grandmother was in school to be a nurse? That is awesome,’” Kenney said.
As Kenney was writing about her sister, she texted her family and asked them what they wanted her to say about Nichole.
“My mother always said, ‘I don’t want to keep talking about how my daughter died,’” Kenney said. “Let’s talk about how she lived.”
Signal Cleveland and Write the Vision plan to continue hosting workshops for families who have lost a loved one to violence. Want to participate or support the ongoing project? Connect with us by filling out the form below.
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