Flock stays strong amid tragedy
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101209/...#ixzz17gAb90UA
Quote:
The Detroit News
On Father's Day, 2008, 15-year-old Derry Lemark Rembert Jr. told his mother he wanted to attend a party at a friend's house. His mother said no. He disobeyed — a decision that cost him his life.
"My son told me, 'Mama, I'm going to a party,'" Kesia Rembert said.
"I told him, 'You're not going to any party.' But he goes anyway."
As he was walking home from the party around midnight, Derry was gunned down on Schaefer, on the city's west side. The shooter is still at large.
"I thought I was raising my son right, so I wasn't even concerned about something like that," said Rembert, 40, who moved to Detroit from Georgia nine years ago and attended New Bethel.
"I told him he couldn't go to the party, but sometimes kids don't listen."
Last year, Kesia Rembert moved back to Georgia. She said there are too many painful memories to remain in Detroit.
"When I got the phone call that my son had been shot, I just shut down," Rembert said. "They say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I'm not accepting that. I feel like this was written to happen, and it happened. Now I'm wondering if it's my fault. Did I do something to bring this on myself? It's something that bothers me all the time."
Rembert said one of Derry's friends contacted her on Facebook. "He said, 'I'm the one who took your son to the party; I shouldn't have taken him, but he was so eager to go.'"Life has changed for Rembert since the shooting.
"Before then, I wasn't concerned about violence, since I didn't think it would affect my life," she said.
"Now I see that it's affecting almost everyone. It seems like so many people [[at New Bethel) have had this happen to them, or someone in their family. It's pretty shocking."
The suburbs might not be sustainable, but this old frontier is getting pretty lawless [[again). :[[
