Heartbreak, anger felt
Buffalo victim had ties to Schenectady pastor and church members
Heartbreak and anger over the racially motivated rampage at a Buffalo supermarket is being felt hundreds of miles away in Schenectady.
Duryee Memorial AME Zion Church Pastor Nicolle Harris said Ruth Whitfield, one of 10 people killed in last Saturday’s mass shooting at a Tops supermarket, was a member of Duryee’s sister church, Durham Memorial AME Zion Church in Buffalo, and a familiar face to her and members of the Schenectady church.
Duryee and Durham are part of a group of roughly two dozen churches stretching from Buffalo to Albany that make up the AME Zion Church’s western New York conference.
The news of Whitfield’s killing hit Duryee hard.
“I was devastated because I was there last month, and you sit with someone at dinner and then you see on the news they got shot and killed in that way,” recalled Harris, who met the 86-year-old Whitfield and taught a workshop at Durham just last month.
“It just hits very close to home because when you’re in Zion you have all of these con
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ferences and meetings that we have to do, and so members of our church, of course, saw her at meetings and banquets.”
Duryee and the Schenectady branch of the NAACP, of which Harris is the president, held a prayer vigil at the church on Wednesday.
Harris said the annual conference is scheduled for July in Syracuse.
Lois Mitchell, a longtime member of Duryee, recalled Friday how Whitfield, who she often saw during her visits to Durham, was a “sweet soul” who sang in the choir there and was part of the AME church conference’s international missionary society that supports work around the globe.
Mitchell, 79, said Whitfield had a kind and gentle aura that was warm and comforting.
“I’ve been inside a church my entire life, and there are people that are in church that just have that face that tells you, you don’t necessarily want to go talk to them but there are others that just have a sweetness about them, something in their smile, something in their eyes, that you feel the love of our Lord in them,” added Mitchell.
She felt an “unbelievable sadness” at hearing that Whitfield, a mother of four, was among those killed.
Mitchell, whose husband died in March, said she also felt a kinship on several fronts with Whitfield, who had stopped by the Tops for groceries after visiting her husband in a nursing home. The Whitfields’ son is Garnell W. Whitfield, a retired Buffalo fire commissioner.
“I spent every single day for three solid weeks visiting my husband at Albany Med, so I understood that — you’re just going about your business trying to do what is the right thing to do and you’re cut down, for what reason, no reason, that was my first thought,” she said. “My second thought was ‘when is it ever
going to end where our people are victimized for no reason other than that we’re Black.’”
She said she also thought about ways Duryee could better secure the church.
The suspected shooter, 18year-old Payton Gendron, drove several hours from his mostly white town near Binghamton to the Tops market.
Officials say he spent months planning to attack Black people and then livestreamed the mass shooting.
Schenectady school board member Nohelani Etienne said her daughter was in the area when the shooting happened.
“My daughter was 13 minutes away from that attack, and I did take that very personally in knowing that people even from our own community were there, it was really difficult and hard,” she said. “I send my heartfelt thoughts and prayers to everyone there that experienced such a horrific and senseless event.”
Before a moment of silence for the victims was observed at this week’s school board meeting, Superintendent of Schools Anibal Soler Jr., who once worked in the Buffalo public schools, said “my heart goes out to my former community.”
On Thursday, Gendron briefly appeared in a Buffalo court for a preliminary hearing before being sent back to jail. He’s charged with first-degree murder.