Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Editorial

March 17, 1999, Wednesday

CHILDREN

GRIEF THAT HEALS

The burgundy sedan crawled up Blair Avenue unnoticed. It pulled over and a stocky man wearing a scuffed hardhat and a construction jumpsuit opened the passenger's door. He rambled up to the brick building, pressed himself against it and gripped a pen. On a poster scribbled over with prayers andpoems, he wrote only this: "To Family and Friends. Be Strong." Then he bounded back into his getaway car and fled the pain.

His message joined hundreds of prayers, holy cards, stuffed animals and flowers. They spilled over the steps of the brick building in Hyde Park where six children died last week.

The fire that killed them grew out of a cycle of hatred and revenge.

The memorial that honored them grew out of a cycle of grace and acceptance.

The fire started, police say, after Nevelyn Stokes, 23, robbed a woman. The woman and her boyfriend paid him back with a beating. He paid them back by burning the woman's home - an apartment full of children.

The memorial, a raw outpouring of grief and faith, evolved overnight. Cheryl Evans, 25, and Denise Huber, 26, put a few dozen roses and carnations at the foot of the brick building where the children died. Ms. Evans owns a pizza place on the first floor of the building. The children died upstairs.

In the days and nights since the fire and the first roses, folks have been circling the corner of Blair Avenue and Salisbury Street. Children and adults arrive hand in hand, depositing a Big Bird piggy bank full of coins here, a mangled fluorescent pink teddy bear there. Ribbons and artificial flowers twist around nearby stop signs and streetlights. Black and white neighbors mingle, reading the prayers pasted against the windows, wiping away silent tears, mourning for the children who will never have children of

their own.

In the silent reverence of their grief, some also marvel at the sense of community and acceptance around them, in a city neighborhood often known only for its violence and poverty. They know and comforteach other. They hug and mourn together. And all of St. Louis - a metropolitan area that celebrates its distance from places like Hyde Park - mourns with them.

What if we mourned this way every time a child died in our city? What if we comforted city children this way every time they lost someone to a violent death? What if we agonized this way every time an 18-year-old city student like Mr. Stokes quit school and turned to crime?

Many city kids face violence and death daily, with no memorials to mark their pain, no teddy bears to console them. What if we channeled our grief over the six Hyde Park children who died into compassion for their city classmates, neighbors and friends - the children of our city who are dying slowly, day by day?