Brandon Jackson, a senior at John Muir HS, was shot in cold blood just a block below my house last February. The shooters were gangsters; Brandon was not. His family couldn't find a place for the memorial service. Some churches were too small, some feared gang retaliation.
First Presbyterian Church, Altadena stepped forward. Session approved the memorial and they approved a fundraising basketball tournament to provide scholarships for promising students, kids who had turned their lives around as Brandon was doing.As Debra Williams, director of Children, Youth, and Family Ministries at Altadena Pres, said, “God uses even the most tragic things to bring life, to bring hope to a community. Death doesn’t have the last word.”
No, indeed.
I wrote about it for Altadena Patch.
A note on the photo: The best sports photographer I ever knew, James Rourke, told me the key to taking great sports shots is to know the game, to know where to point the camera. This is not a great shot, but I thought of him while I was shooting.
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