[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?'''

                          ____________________