He lost his father — and gained a family
Officers escort boy to kindergarten, filling in for the dad he never knew, who was killed on duty in 2011
When Alisha Will needs a hand around her Tomball home — moving the refrigerator, hanging a flag above the garage, the kinds of chores her husband would have done — she calls or texts members of her family in blue.
Inevitably, off-duty police officers arrive quickly, offering more help than she needs.
A couple weeks ago, Alisha put out one of those messages. Her 5-year-old son was about to start kindergarten, but he wouldn’t be sharing the moment with his father, a Houston police officer who was killed in an on-duty crash in 2011. Wouldn’t it be nice, she asked, if a few officers walked the boy down the street to his first day of school?
“All I did was send a text saying, ‘Hey, can I have some guys come to the house?’ ” Alisha said. “I thought four, five, maybe six.”
True to form, the officers overdelivered.
Shortly after 7 a.m., as the sun rose on a sticky August morning, about 100 officers — most of them from the Houston Police Department, 13 of them mounted on horseback — arrived at the Will family home. Together, they picked up Kevin Will Jr., dressed sharply in a button-down shirt, blue jeans and sparkling white sneakers, and started the 0.7-mile trek to Wildwood Elementary School in Tomball.
After a quick picture with Kevin in the saddle of
“All I did was send a text saying, ‘Hey, can I have some guys come to the house?’ ” Alisha Will
a horse, the crew quietly walked in a long line through his subdivision. As Kevin clung to his mother and grandfather, barely uttering a word, officers marshaled traffic and carved a path for the procession. Eventually, a helicopter escort arrived overhead.
And finally, when it was all over, a Tomball ISD administrator greeted them with a booming “Hello,” then showed the boy the way to his class.
“I think he was way overwhelmed today,” Alisha said. “But he was excited about kindergarten, and I talked to him about the officers being here because his daddy couldn’t.”
Meticulous officer
The fatal crash occurred in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2011, as Officer Kevin Will worked his overnight shift for the Houston Police Department’s vehicular crimes division.
The 37-year-old officer had been with the department for only two years, the result of a career change in his mid-30s. After studying engineering at Texas Tech University and working in finance for several years before the recession, he joined the police department in 2009, called to a profession of service. He’d developed a reputation as a meticulous officer, who meshed with colleagues by pulling frequent pranks.
“Kevin was one of those guys that wanted to take the extra steps — wanted to make sure everything got done right,” said Houston police Sgt. Don Egdorf, who met Will in training classes.
On that fateful Sunday, Will was interviewing a witness to a hit-and-run involving a motorcyclist on the North Loop of Interstate 610. Officers used patrol vehicles to set up a barricade to give investigators space to work.
At about 3:15 a.m., a 26-yearold motorist with a blood-alcohol content nearly three times the legal limit blew through the barricade and past flashing police lights. He sped toward the scene at more than 80 mph, barreling down on Will. Witnesses said the officer screamed at a civilian, warning him to get out of the way. The civilian was able to jump to safety before Will was struck and killed.
Officers delivered the news to Alisha at her mother’s house, where she was resting in bed, pregnant with the couple’s first child. They had planned to name him Matthew.
In the days after the tragedy, Houston’s police community surrounded the family to provide support, from street-level officers to the department’s chief.
Three months later, Alisha gave birth to a baby boy. She named him Kevin.
Father’s absence felt
If everything had gone according to plan, Kevin Sr. would have been the first person awake in his house. He would have downed a cup of strong black coffee, gotten his son and two stepchildren out of bed, and escorted Alisha and Kevin Jr. to Wildwood.
“It would have been a normal day, like every other parent that took their kindergartner to school,” Alisha said.
Alisha and Kevin met through a mutual friend, dating on and off for three years. At first, her family was wary. He was a decade older than she was.
“But after meeting him, we fell in love with him, both my husband and I,” said Alisha’s mother, Cyndee Herring.
He was all Alisha could want — an intelligent, goofy, charming man with a deep Christian faith. When he’d pump gas, he was liable to chat up the customer next to him. When he needed to provide for his family, he took side jobs working security at a hospital and the local Food Mart.
He doted on Alisha’s two children, Abby and Alex, then went “over the moon” after learning he’d become a father, Alisha said.
Before his death, he’d begun studying to become a sergeant, seeking a career path that provided a better life for his wife and children.
Today, his only son is a precocious 5-year-old who loves to swim and play with his new puppy and watch “Paw Patrol.” Some day, young Kevin wants to play football like his 17-year-old stepbrother, even if his grandmother would prefer he play baseball like his father.
Kevin Jr. believes his father is in heaven. He knows it’s because of a drunken driver. He doesn’t know much more, and every now and then, he asks a question that reminds his family of all he has to learn.
“Some days,” Herring said, “he’ll look at Alisha and say, ‘When is my daddy coming to meet me?’”
‘Doing this all for Kevin’
The officers have been there from the start. Through the funeral, through the trial that resulted in the 26-year-old driver’s plea to intoxicated manslaughter and 55-year prison sentence, through the milestones in Kevin Jr.’s life. They’ve taken the boy to police memorials, to fundraising dinners, to the zoo.
“It could be just about anything. We’re just open for them,” Egdorf said. “Even with this today, it’s not necessarily something we’re looking for attention on ourselves. We’re doing this all for Kevin.” When word started trickling out about Tuesday’s event, some officers tried to keep it in relatively closed quarters. They ended up with officers from as far south as McAllen, north as Fort Worth and west as Odessa.
“We knew if we put it out to the public, we’d have 100,000 people out here cheering Kevin on,” said Doug Griffith, vice president of the Houston Police Officers Union.
Alisha Will says her husband’s fellow officers have been a constant presence in the past six years, helping her navigate the tumult of unexpectedly losing a husband. For Kevin Jr., the officers’ presence Tuesday was another reminder that when he lost his father, he gained a family.
“He knows,” Alisha said, “that they’ll always be there.”