| Well, he Ain't Getting No Victory Here Tonight and I Ain't... The Charlotte Observer November 04, 2006 co-founder of mothers of murdered offspring Ever vigilant against violence Bold soul of support group raises voice where spirits are in danger of falling Mark Price Judy Williams knows she puts herself in danger hosting prayer vigils at murder scenes in Charlotte. But 13 years without a scratch has made her fearless, even when things get scary. This is one of those scary nights, a cooler-than-expected Friday, when the 55-year-old grandmother has two vigils back to back. The first is at 8:30, in a northeast Charlotte convenience store where Walter Clawson, 23, was killed a week earlier. Who shot him and why is a mystery. All that his family knows is where it happened. So they asked Williams, co-founder of the citizens group Mothers of Murdered Offspring, to meet them at the Hup-In Discount Beverages on Milton Road. Fifty mourners are waiting when she pulls up in a blue Honda Odyssey stuffed to the roof with yellow balloons. Most are crying. Some are angry. A few speak of revenge against the unknown killer. Williams steps into the crowd, ready to give a speech that she will find herself repeating 10 times in October. It was the county's deadliest month this year, with 11 homicides. She addresses the crowd as if the killer is listening in the dark. 'It's a coward who will walk up and shoot somebody who is unarmed,' she says, using a microphone and speaker plugged into her van battery. 'You are only hurting yourself. Live by the gun, die by the gun. Just what you did to this man, somebody is going to do to you.' She is 10 minutes into her vigil when trouble starts: A group of young men in a car parked at the other side of the lot is taunting the crowd. One of the men waves what looks like a pistol. Williams is too far away to see, but can't help but hear yelled threats. People have begun to surround the car, their voices raised, hands balled into fists. 'This is NOT why we are here,' Williams yells. 'If you are a part of this vigil, please come back. Satan is trying to get another life. Well, he ain't getting no victory here tonight and I ain't scared. I ain't going nowhere until we've finished what we started. We are here to put our foot on the devil's head. 'I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,' she says, looking at the crowd around the car. 'I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. We REBUKE YOU in the name of JESUS.' A woman standing next to Williams joins in ... then a man ... then a husband and wife, and a chant builds around her in the parking lot of the Hup-In Discount Beverages. The men in the car slump in silence ... outnumbered. Committed to making life count Judy Williams has helped organize an estimated 650 vigils, balloon releases and funerals in Mecklenburg County, including bloody summer months when she did as many as three in one day.All were done at no charge to the parents, regardless of the victim's age. In most cases, Williams reached out first, calling the families with phone numbers pulled from police reports stacked by the dozens in her office. The easy assumption would be that this divorced mother lost one of her children to murder, prompting her to co-found a group for grieving parents. That's not the case. Williams is the one who escaped a murder, when she was raped at age 16 by a man who pulled a knife and threatened to kill her. The rapist was never caught. The assault showed her the face of evil at an early age, and she has lived the last 40 years committed to making her life count for something. Mothers of Murdered Offspring has given her that chance. It was conceived in 1993 as a support group for survivors, at a time when Mecklenburg County was in the midst of a record year for homicides -- 129. However, Williams also made it a mission to try to prevent murders, and that meant frequent trips to poorer neighborhoods, where young black people accounted for the bulk of the city's murdered. She is convinced the vigils are one reason 1993's homicide record has yet to be broken. 'Every encounter I have,' she says, 'is an opportunity to change a life and maybe save a life.' Dee Sumpter of Charlotte is another co-founded, and she marvels that Williams hasn't cracked under the strain. Sumpter is still a member, but stopped attending vigils regularly three years ago, after the relentless grief began to overwhelm her. 'We attended 90 percent of the funerals in this city for murder victims,' says Sumpter. 'I had to break away or I'd lose my sanity. I had become physically and emotionally ill, and in this mission there is no room for the faint of heart. You are in the midst of tremendous heartache and pain all the time.' There is danger, too. No one in the group has been hurt, but holding vigils on the home turf of killers is a symbol of defiance, says Sumpter. 'The perpetrators are watching and it pricks them deep and hard. The message is: `We will not sit back and let you do this.' 'Judy is a bold soul at that.' Back on Milton Road It's a stand-off back at Hup-In Discount Beverages. The carload of troublemakers remains surrounded by a cluster of Walter Clawson's mourners, including a woman in a lavender gown who screams and shakes her fists at the driver. Another is looking for a cell phone to call 911. Babies are crying. Kids are clinging to their parents. It'd be a good time to leave. Williams chooses instead to make a stand, and demands that the crowd join her. This, she tells them, is the same evil that killed Walter Clawson. 'We have got to find a way of dealing with our differences short of killing each other. It starts with you, right here, choosing to put down your guns,' she says. 'If things don't change -- if you don't change -- I don't know what the future is going to hold for your children.' She punches a button on her CD player and the lot is filled with the sound of 'Missing You,' a ballad about death and regret. The yelling stops and Williams begins passing out helium-filled balloons, each tagged with Clawson's photo and a Bible verse: 'And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.' As the song reaches its climax, Williams begins pointing from person to person, whispering it's their time to let go. One by one, the balloons drift out of reach and disappear. The symbolism is clear and they begin to cry. Most are watching the sky when the carload of troublemakers slips out of the lot. Only the woman in the lavender gown follows them, screaming at them from the sidewalk. Williams checks her watch. She's a half-hour late for the next vigil. One hundred people are waiting, including two women who'll be arguing in the front yard. Repaying a debt It's tough to scare a woman who grew up scraping to survive, in a family terrorized by an alcoholic, abusive father. Williams says she was forced to be brave at an early age, trying to stop the beatings that often left her mother, Mary Howard, bruised and bloody.Williams' late father rarely made enough to support the family. In the worst of times, she recalls, there were 10 of them living in a two-bedroom home and they often went to bed hungry. 'When you grow up not having a lot, people treat you differently.... They make you feel like you don't have any worth, like they wish you weren't there,' she says. There were exceptions, among them a woman named Celestine Hames, who was Williams' strict fourth-grade teacher. Hames and Williams' mother, Mary Howard, remain the two great inspirations in her life. 'Mrs. Hames took an interest in me, saw that I caught on fast and encouraged me. When we had a spring program, she went out and bought me this pretty yellow dress with a pair of white pumps -- the first pair of new shoes I can remember. I kept them until I wore the heels off of them.' Mothers of Murdered Offspring is, in part, Williams' attempt to repay the kindness. In February 1993, a 20-year-old Central Piedmont Community College student named Shawna Hawk was strangled by Henry Louis Wallace, a serial killer sentenced to death in 1997 for the murders of nine women. Hawk was Hames' grandchild. She was also the daughter of group co-founder Dee Sumpter. Six weeks after Hawk's funeral, Sumpter and Williams presided over the first meeting of Mothers of Murdered Offspring. Fifty people came, all with pictures of murdered children. A grandmother activist Within a year of its first meeting, Mothers of Murdered Offspring began to expand in any direction that offered a chance to confront violence, including lectures at troubled schools and balloon releases at public parks. Most were emotional, but stayed peaceful. Ten volunteers shared duties at the height of activity, and grant money enabled the group to hire a small staff. The Police Department even chipped in with a free office, noting that Williams had a knack for hearing details that could help with homicide investigations. A tough stretch for the group has forced her to leave that office unstaffed much of the time. It started a few years ago, with a drop-off in volunteers. Then the grant money dried up, taking the paid staff with it. Donations still trickle in, but Williams now covers many expenses, donating 5 percent of her $32,000 income as manager of the Kingspark Apartments off West Boulevard. That's also where she lives -- in a four-bedroom apartment shared with two preschool grandchildren, a 15-year-old daughter she took in as a baby and later adopted, and a 39-year-old autistic adult she took legal responsibility for 20 years ago. It's her children and neighbors who are pitching in to help with the vigils. On those nights, they band together in her apartment, creating an assembly line that inflates balloons, clips out tags with Bible verses, and pieces together lapel pins by the dozen. Dee Sumpter has promised to be there on nights when Williams can't make it, and Williams' son David Howard remains active as a board adviser for the group. Still, Williams needs more help, particularly on nights when the tendinitis in her heels flares up and her bad knees ache from standing so long. Her big fear is that Mothers of Murdered Offspring will die with her, because no one wants the job. 'I imagine being a stooped-over little old lady, still doing balloon releases and prayer vigils.' At vigil No. 2 Nobody gets off easy at Williams' vigils. She chides the young for glorifying violence, the old people for bad parenting, and everyone in between for not taking a stand against anything.Some don't like the rebuke. A few walked off as she preached outside the Hup-in Discount Beverages, including a teen wearing a bulletproof vest as a fashion statement. Things aren't any easier at her second vigil, in the front yard of a home off North Tryon. The street is darker than she expected, the yard more crowded and the mood more tense. The victim was a teen who died in yet another shooting on a city street. One hundred fidgety people have come to pay their respects, including some who are nursing their grief with beer. Two women are arguing, one of them insisting the other leave. The crowd widens in anticipation of trouble. Williams is nearly finished setting up her PA system when the smaller of the two women retreats to a house across the road. In the uncomfortable silence that follows, Williams seizes the crowd's attention with a prayer. As on so many other nights, the prayer turns to a plea. 'If you've ever thought about ending somebody else's life in anger, I want you to remember this scene and know that you will be putting another family through this,' she says. 'What are we doing to each other? It's time to stop. It's time to try harder. I pray that at the end of this service, we will not leave the way we came.' The words are only minutes old when a crying man in the crowd lunges at someone, fists swinging. Then something beautiful happens. Three men intervene, holding the young man until his anger subsides. A sign of hope. Maybe tonight, somebody was listening. Judy Williams Family: Grew up in Charlotte as one of eight children born to Luther and Mary Howard. Divorced. Children include adults David, Trinace, Etienne and daughter Ianna Howard, 15. She has been a foster mother to seven children. First jobs: At age 14, she got a summer job in a Chinese restaurant as a dishwasher. By her senior year of high school, she had two part-time jobs. Currently manages the Kingspark Apartments off West Boulevard. Quote: 'If something happens to me while I'm doing a vigil, I can only die once. You can't do the Lord's work and be afraid of the devil.' |