Deal with the hate to prevent slayings
If anyone ever had reason to demonize manufacturers of guns and rifles it would have been the late Darryl Williams, who spent the final 31 years of his life as a quadriplegic after being shot by a racist sniper while awaiting the start of the second half of a high school football game in Charlestown.
He was 15 at the time, a sophomore at old J.P. High.
Whenever Darryl attended Celtics games, his chair would be positioned in a special loge section, offering an unimpeded view of the action.
But one morning he called, asking, “Do you think I could sit at floor level next time?”
Looking down from the loge, he explained, brought discomfort to his neck.
So he was relocated and on a subsequent visit to his orthopedic surgeon he shared that story.
“You know, that bullet is still in there,” the doctor told him. “If we removed it, there’s a chance it might give you just a bit more range of motion.”
So the procedure took place while the patient, fully awake, listened to Kiss 108.
“When the doctor got it out,” Darryl later recalled “he asked if I wanted to see it. I told him yes. So he held it in front of me. It was just a twisted, bent-up piece of metal; it didn’t look like a bullet at all.
“And I thought, ‘So this is what’s caused so much torment in my life.’ But then I thought, ‘No, that’s not entirely true.’ ”
Not true? How could it not be true, he was asked.
“The bullet didn’t get there by itself, did it?” he replied. “It wasn’t just the bullet that hurt me; it was the attitude that fired the bullet.”
In years to come Darryl, who died in 2010, would carry that message to schools throughout the city, and one night brought it to an anti-violence rally in Franklin Field attended by scores of at-risk kids.
That’s a tough audience to command, but he had them hanging on every word.
“The bullet that hurt me is useless now,” he told his young listeners. “It can’t hurt anyone else. But the ignorance and hate that fired it are alive and well, waiting to wipe you out, just like they were waiting for me when I was your age.
“Is any of that attitude here tonight? I surely hope not. But if there is, just leave it here when you go. Please, say goodbye to it right now.
“I’m asking you to be my arms, my legs, in carrying this message wherever it needs to be heard.”
He was indeed a giant, even in a wheelchair.
And the message he paid such a high price to deliver remains as relevant as ever today: Getting rid of lethal weapons will not solve our problems until we begin dealing with lethal attitudes, too.