I caught this story in my hometown paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Her name is Charlene E. Wilson-Duffoney, and she is an African American funeral home director here in Philly. Sadly, few people are in a better position to see the effects of violence on our young people out here than she is.
Anyway, here are a few quotes from Ms. Wilson-Doffoney which I think are noteworthy:
"At the service for a teenage boy,someone decided to play a rap song calling for avenging the dead. The teenagers stood up as if it were the national anthem." She went on. "Mothers stood and swayed." She said that she, along with the clergy, and the school district officials present, were "all shocked at what they saw."
She also says that she remembers a funeral "where gunmen opened fire outside the church. People hid under pews." She said.
"And she has a friend whose son was shot, and to this day won't tell his mother who shot him." She said that "'she finds that unbelievable.'"
"She says that 'some deaths get to her more than others'. One friend was murdered in the 1990s at a bar. He had told her that he knew he would be shot to death one day. It was eerie when he wound up in her funeral home , having died just that way. "
"'He died on his birthday' she recalled, a tear running down her face. She buried him."
Mothers stood and swayed for a rap song avenging the dead? WTF?
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