Family: No protest during Brown funeral
Family views his body before today’s burial.
On the eve of Michael Brown’s funeral today, the teen’s parents saw their son for the first time since his death and tried to prepare for a burial that will test their strength.
At noon Sunday, about 100 family members and friends gathered for a private viewing of Brown’s body at Austin A. Layne Mortuary. They gazed at Brown, who lay with his arms crossed in a gold and black casket wearing a blue-and-white-checked shirt, a navy blue sweater vest and a neatly tied red-and-blue-striped bow tie. He showed no sign of the shots that ended his life Aug. 9.
Brown’s parents each spent time alone with his body. Then other people came in.
“They say tomorrow is going to be the hardest day, but I think today was — just seeing my baby laying there, cold,” said Lesley McSpadden, 34, Brown’s mother. “It did something to my heart. It’s too much. It’s too much.”
Later Sunday, the annual Peace Fest in St. Louis became a rally about Michael Brown and the unrest in Ferguson, where the black 18-year-old was shot by a white police officer on Aug. 9.
Michael Brown Sr., 36, joined by Al Sharpton, asked the crowd not to demonstrate during his son’s funeral. “Tomorrow, all I want is peace while my son is being laid to rest,” he said.
At the mortuary, the room was mostly silent save for sobs and babies’ cries. Brown’s grandmother, Desuirea Harris, sat in a corner outside the room, crying uncontrollably. She later joined McSpadden on a pew just to the right of the casket.
Many people stopped to hug McSpadden, 34, who wore a Tshirt with a photo of her son in his graduation cap and gown and a photo of McSpadden looking distraught. Her shirt said, “He was special 2 me” on the front. The back said, “To my children, if I had to choose between loving you and breathing ... I would use my last breath to tell you I love you.”
Other family members wore blue and white shirts that said, “A Bond Never Broken” with a photo of Brown and his mother.
Two TVs played a slide show of photos of Brown — in a pool laughing, at Christmas opening gifts, listening to headphones while several woman laughed in a kitchen.
Brown’s father spent most of the time pacing the burgundy carpet and greeting people. After a while he took off his T-shirt, making a new tattoo of his son’s face visible outside his undershirt on his right shoulder.
At about 1:15 p.m., Brown’s casket was closed, and a baseball cap that had lain with him in the casket was placed over it.