“It doesn’t get any easier. The grief, the pain, the memories never go away,” says Frances Davis of Brooklyn, recalling any mother’s worst nightmare.
“I keep hearing their voices saying, `So what are you gonna do about this, Mommy?’ “
Davis, 45, is possessed of a serenity and quiet strength that belie the turmoil in her heart, still healing from the violence that leveled her life when, within six years, she lost all three of her sons to gunfire in the rough Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
She speaks with the compassion of someone who has suffered greatly as she describes the personal hell that transformed her into an outspoken advocate for gun control.
“After my first son, Raleak, died eight years ago, I was in a trance, totally depressed,” says Davis, a single mother who worried about bills to pay and keeping her sons safe in an increasingly violent neighborhood. “I couldn’t even get out of bed in the mornings. I thought of all the struggling I did to bring him into manhood, and then he’s wiped out in a second.
“Even now, the grief, the anger is still so fresh. It takes a while to stop listening for your child to come home.”
In an effort to deal with her grief, Davis attended weekly therapy sessions and local support groups, where she commiserated with other mothers of murdered children. But it wasn’t until her remaining sons, Andrew and Frankie, were shot to death in 1991 and 1993 that she channeled her pain into public action and embarked upon her heroic crusade to make the streets safer for our nation’s youth.
“When it happened to Andrew, and then Frankie, I was not only devastated, I was enraged,” says Davis, who began to see herself less as a victim and more as a voice for all children.
“I was so angry with the police and the community. How could they let young people die like this? Even though my grief was overwhelming, I knew I had to act. I wanted to do something that would make a difference, especially for young people.”
Davis has assumed her new role with eloquence and grace, speaking out against guns in the media and at high schools and victims-assistance organizations, counseling grief-stricken parents, galvanizing gun-control lobbyists and politicians and launching her own community-support and gun-awareness groups.
“Now I know that my sons haven’t died in vain,” she says. “Their deaths are not about me being selfish, but about saving kids and communities. That has become my total focus, and the memory of my sons keeps me strong.”
Davis’ triple tragedy began in the summer of 1987, when her oldest son, Raleak, 20, a sheet metal worker and part-time student at Long Island University in Brooklyn, was shot on the street near his grandmother’s home by a young man who wanted his money.
“We lived with a false sense of security for a long time, thinking that our community was safe, that we knew everyone,” says Davis. “My sons were good. They weren’t involved with drugs and never looked for trouble, but they would defend themselves.”
Davis says she started to see more violence on the streets just a few years before Raleak was murdered. At that time, she worked as a unit clerk in the emergency room at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, where more and more young men were staggering in with gunshot wounds.
“Street disputes were being settled with guns instead of fists,” says Davis. “Every time the trauma code went off, I’d wonder, `Is that my son? Will this child survive?’ I felt so much sympathy for other mothers.”
According to a recent FBI crime report, cited by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence in Washington, deaths by handguns accounted for 57 percent of the more than 22,000 Americans murdered in 1994. The report also reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the most common cause of a gun homicide is a quarrel and not gang or drug violence.
Other firearms studies show equally alarming statistics. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that within the next 15 years firearm fatalities will become the United States’ leading cause of injury-related death, unless violence is curbed.
And the Washington-based Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence reports that 1 of every 4 teenage deaths is the result of a firearm injury, while nearly 100,000 students in the U.S. bring guns to school every day.
For Davis, such statistics became a reality that plunged her into an emotional paralysis after her first son’s death, forcing her in 1988 to take a medical leave from her job as secretary to the director of nursing at Long Island University.
While she had worked in hospitals most of her life in various technical and clerical positions, she left Brookdale Hospital in 1986 because she says the job had become “too depressing.”
“Then, I was consumed with my other sons’ safety, and how to keep them from getting hurt,” says Davis.
She says weekly therapy sessions with Victim Services, a homicide counseling group in Brooklyn, and talks and outings with women in her neighborhood who had lost children to gunfire helped to ease her out of her depression.
Just as Davis was getting her life back on track, looking for work again and attending classes in psychology at Long Island University, her middle son, Andrew, 22, was shot and killed by a group of neighborhood youths in another dispute on the same block on which his brother died.
“I thought, `This is unreal; it’s happening to me again,’ ” says Davis, recalling her agonizing 12-day hospital vigil at her dying son’s bedside.
“I never prayed so hard in my life. I was sick to my stomach, and I felt so helpless. Here was another lifeless body because guns were available to kids. I would’ve taken the bullets myself to spare my sons.”
This time, Davis says, she didn’t want to “just sit around and talk” about her pain. Instead, her rage propelled her into action. In 1991 at Andrew’s funeral, she urged her sons’ friends to put down their guns and value their lives.
She returned to her Victim Services support group, where she encouraged others to write letters to local legislators condemning gun violence. And she began visiting schools throughout New York, speaking to students about the dangers of guns.
“I had to come out of my tragedy and think about others,” says Davis. “Even though it was hard to escape the daily reminders, like seeing someone on the street who reminded me of one of my sons or feeling like I didn’t fit in because I couldn’t plan a graduation or a wedding. The pain is always there.”
Yet Davis forged onward, hoping that by healing the community she might also heal herself.
“I became obsessed with my mission to end gun violence,” she says. “I found myself clipping articles on the subject constantly. I wanted to know how guns became so available, how we failed as parents.”
In 1992 she testified before the New York state legislature on the impact of gun violence on families in inner-city communities, but she says she became frustrated with the legal process.
“While we’re waiting for gun-control bills to be passed, kids are still dying on the streets,” says Davis. “So I decided that I had to go directly to the kids and try to change their attitudes about guns.”
Davis says she began to have informal meetings with her sons’ friends at her house and learned a lot about their fears:
“As I talked to these kids, I realized that their lives seemed meaningless to them. They said they didn’t learn anything in school. They were upset about the lack of jobs and feared failure. And they felt pressure from their peers to be aggressive. They were lost and without hope, and all I could do was to make them feel like they mattered.”
Listening to the young men helped Davis to become clearer about her own passion to stop the violence.
“You don’t feel so helpless when you know you have a purpose,” she says. “Life without purpose is no life at all.”
Soon she began appearing in the national press and on television talk shows such as “Sally Jessy Raphael” and “Donahue.” And she kept a journal of “letters to her sons,” in which she shared with them her thoughts and feelings as each of their deaths propelled her further into public action.
“Even though I was feeling a little better spiritually and emotionally, I still felt that I hadn’t done enough,” says Davis, who contemplated suicide after her youngest son, Frankie, 18, fell victim in 1993 to random gunfire at his grandmother’s doorstep, where bullet holes are still visible reminders of his loss.
“When Frankie died, I lost all faith and the will to go on,” Davis says. “Nothing about my life seemed real. But then I started hearing my sons’ voices again, and I saw a little flicker of light in all the blackness. I thought, there must be a reason for this. God isn’t finished with me yet. I have more work to do.”
She says an inaccurate article in a local newspaper, which said that her son had been carrying a gun, snapped her out of her despair.
“Frankie wasn’t like that. He never got into fights,” says Davis, who made calls to the media to set the story straight. “One of the worst things is for a parent to lose a child and then see him slandered as if he wasn’t important.”
Supported by letters and calls of sympathy from all over the country, Davis once again transformed her sorrow into service. She joined coalitions that lobby for gun control, helped to file a class-action suit against gun manufacturers and continues to speak out at schools and at anti-violence and victims groups in which she counsels families recovering from homicides and networks with politicians, health-care workers and gun-control advocates.
She has also directed her considerable energy into her own anti-violence organization, Mothers of All Children, which she and another Brooklyn mother founded in 1993 with the hope of educating young people and raising public awareness about the devastation caused by guns.
The group’s activities have included events such as Shoot Hoops, Not Guns, a local basketball game dedicated to the memory of Davis’ sons and other murdered youths.
“Now, the work has completely taken over and filled the void that my kids have left,” says Davis, who recently started a neighborhood support group in her home for mothers concerned about gun violence. “I’m totally dedicated to my mission.”
Davis hopes her efforts will not only increase awareness of gun violence and inspire young people to find purpose in their lives but also help to put an end to illegal gun sales to minors by forcing the federal government and gun manufacturers to assume more responsibility.
Currently, the only laws protecting Americans against gun violence, says Barbara Hohlt, president of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, are a 1994 ban on military-style assault weapons and the Brady Law, also enacted in 1994, which calls for gun dealers to run a background check on prospective handgun owners during a five-day waiting period before a gun can be sold.
“Frances has been such an inspiration to groups like ours,” says Hohlt, who adds that guns are the only product not covered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, due mainly to the efforts of the powerful National Rifle Association lobby.
“People look at her in amazement. She has taken her tragedy and her rage and turned it into something positive. She has an ability to look out at the community and help make it better.”
For Davis, it began with three nightmares and ends with one dream:
“I still can’t believe I’ve come through this. But I believe in the power within. More than anything, I want to try to change all this madness and give our children back their childhoods.
“Some people are afraid to get involved, but we can’t live in fear. My fear is that if I don’t get involved, more children will die.”
