Posted on 04/02/2008 7:23:32 AM PDT by 2banana
'Mother's pride' is laid to rest By DAFNEY TALES & DAVID GAMBACORTA Philadelphia Daily News
LONG AFTER the final hymn had been sung and the last rose had been laid across her son's bronze casket, Sharon Conroy sat in her quiet home in Lansdowne trying to make sense of it all.
Her mind drifted through a steady stream of tender memories of her son, Sean Patrick Conroy.
She could see him as an eager, grinning Cub Scout, then as the kid who went to dinner and a movie with her every Friday night until it seemed uncool at age 15.
She remembered his spontaneous move to California after high school to become an animator for Disney, then his return to the Philadelphia area, where he matured into his "mother's pride," working as a mentor in North Philly and helping out with charities.
He found a job that he loved, running a Center City Starbucks, fell in love with the woman of his dreams and, at age 36, planned on a full and happy life. "This was the gentle man I was lucky enough to call my son," Sharon Conroy said.
Then it all fell apart on an underground SEPTA platform in Center City last Wednesday afternoon, when four teens inexplicably attacked Conroy's son, kicking and punching him until he had a fatal asthma attack, police said.
Police arrested Kinta Stanton, 16, a 10th-grader at Simon Gratz High School, and charged him as an adult with murder. Stanton has refused to identify the other youths, who also attend Simon Gratz and remain on the loose, a police source said.
Last night, people who answered the door at Stanton's home on Smedley Street near Griscom told a reporter that they didn't know him.
The fatal attack, which investigators said had been unprovoked, has incensed citizens across the city, from everyday SEPTA riders to Conroy's friends and relatives.
They wonder why no one has turned in the other teens, or what could have prompted them in the first place to attack an innocent guy who was known for his gentle, easygoing nature.
Through it all, Sharon Conroy said she remains calm in this tumultuous sea of anger and pain.
"It's not to say that I'm not angry," she said yesterday, hours after her son was buried at Ss. Peter and Paul Cemetery, in Marple Township. "But my son was a gentle person and would have wanted us to get all the facts."
Conroy said nearly 200 teary-eyed mourners packed St. Cyril's Church, in Lansdowne, for her son's funeral, and the funeral procession included 170 cars.
Starbucks employees were among the attendees, including Mike Rose, a district manager, who talked about Conroy as helpful and compassionate.
Old friends from his Cub Scout days showed up, and a former employer from California sent a two-page euology about how "gentle and polite" Sean Patrick Conroy was.
On Easter Sunday, Conroy became engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Stevany Johar. Yesterday, Johar released a statement through Sharon Conroy, which read in part:
"I still cannot accept his death in so many ways. Everything reminds me of him. Part of me still believes that he will come home, give me a kiss and also a hug like he always did."
In the week since Conroy's death, SEPTA's subway lines have been flooded with more than two dozen members of the Guardian Angels, the civilian watchdog group that was founded in 1979 in response to violence on New York's subway system.
"SEPTA riders are terrified," said Curtis Sliwa, founder and president of the organization. "These kids come on like a tsunami onto trains and trolleys and start acting wild."
The Guardian Angels will patrol the Broad Street line and the Market-Frankford El Monday through Friday, from 1 to 5 p.m., to address commuters' fears. *
Daily News staff writers Mensah Dean and Kirstin Lindermayer contributed to this report.
Oh, My family wasn’t a Rizzo fan (either Rizzo) But, he was idolized in South Philly. I’m not sure how the other sections of the city felt about him.
Girard Estate in South Philly used to be a nice area. Same with Packer Park. We lived “across the street” from Girard Estate. I know GE isn’t someplace I’d want to live now. Also, a couple years ago, a new development was built on the land of the old Navy housing. Name escapes me at the moment (Packer Estates maybe?). Beautiful, expensive homes - but, I still wouldn’t want to live there.
Yeah, Frank was a bastard, but he OUR bastard.
My grandmother didn’t have to be afraid to walk 1 block to the Acme when Frankie was running things. Later on, I remember escorting her with a baseball bat in my hands because of the “disadvantaged, underprivileged few” hanging ou ton the corner waiting to smack an old lady old the head and take her shopping money.
My mother didn’t HAVE to carry her 38 Chief’s Special when Frank was running things. She DID, however, have to carry it when Wee Willie “Burn Down Your Neighborhood” Wilson Goode was running things. And it only got worse when Brutha Street took over.
I guess things always look better when you’re looking back through the lens of a couple of decades, though. I think we tend to idealize “the good old days”, even when they probably weren’t really all that good.
Either way, I’m sick of feral, low-class gangsta scumbags and their idiotic criminal mentality. This crap stops when good people shoot them down like the animals they emulate.
The “us and dem” mentality just shows how many decades far behind Philly is compared to NYC. Again, what kept NYC from being Philly is that the wealthy stayed (and are still coming, from around the world), while the immigrants diversified the population (preventing racial power blocks a la PHL and Detroit). Philly, on the other hand, remains a black/white, mostly lower/lower middle class city with little employment base outside of the government. Rather depressing, though still not as bad as Baltimore.
Does the word apology live in your vocabulary?
: )
I didn’t ignore your post. Just looked like the thread had died by the time I’d got back to it. Sorry if you took my words wrong, but the way I read her comments were that she’d had an incident and was reacting to it. And people suddenly went on the attack. If her words were inelegant, that’s not necessarily racist.
If you were a cat and you’d been in a fight, and you’d been bitten near the back or the tail, and someone later, after the fight was over, pet you on the lower back, near the tail, your instinctive respose is to bite. And in all the cats I’ve ever had, if they get into a vicious fight with a particular color cat, then later, another cat of the same color is automatically viewed with extreme suspicion. Does that mean cats are racist? Or do they follow some form of natural law to protect themselves against predators that look similar to their prior attackers? I know that I have several friends who are black, several former managers who are (as a matter of fact, the two best managers I’ve had in my entire 20+ year computer career were both black. With them, it was less their color, and more like it was just a feature like black hair, brown eyes, tall, short, etc. They were people. The color of their skin was just there.) I’ve been assaulted twice (once with the carjacking) and both times were by black people. Frankly, I don’t look at someone who is black as anything different than someone who is white or asian or hispanic. If they act like the thugs who assaulted me, whether black, white, yellow, brown, purple or green, I will look at them with the most utter disgust and contempt. Doesn’t matter who they are or what they look like. It’s how they act.
Again, sorry if you took offense at my words. Wasn’t trying to insult you. Was just frustrated that someone said they were attacked and then was accused of racism. Maybe some of her words were, but if she’s been through a traumatic experience, then maybe she should have a bit of cautious thought about people who are of different races, just for her own safety.
Paul
You don't say all blacks are violent...and NOT get called on it. It's a racist moronic statement. She never backed away from that statement.
You've apparently focused on some "event", of hers. Frankly, I HIGHLY doubt that "event" ever happened. She appears very full-of-it....
Oh, I'm not offended.....Just thought you were taking a pot shot...and ran off.
FWIW-
I agree with the comment that “You don’t say all blacks are violent...and NOT get called on it.”
Racist or not? I don’t know. Don’t particularly care. It’s particularly stupid. It’s like saying all Hispanics are illegals and all Arabs are terrorists and all Democrats are traitors.... (Wait, one out of three? ;) )
Racism is basically a lack of understanding or lack of intelligence. Reverend Wright for example, tossing out some rather generalizing statements about whites, I will challenge him to EVER find an incident of me doing ANY of the things he’s accused the entire race of doing. And if he can find something I’ve stupidly done that might offend, I can toss out a different one. My Grandmother. Never a mean bone in her body. Ever. She was one of the best people you could imgaine. She taught Sunday School, volunteered, though she was raised in a southern town in a southern time, refused to say a negative thing about blacks in general, and often would, just to tweak the noses of those who practiced hatred, invite the kids from “the other side of the track” to come play. She loved everyone. Not just “white” people.
When she passed, there were over 700 people that either attended her funeral or the memorial service.
People fear that they don’t understand and if they fear it, they often hate it.
Paul
That's the problem, Paul.
Not particularly a problem. It may be that she’s racist. If so, I don’t particularly care about what she thinks. If she’s not, then she’s doing something in reaction to her situation, and should more be worked with than harassed.
I think racism is more of a state of mind than anything. Shouldn’t be something that a person needs to be addressing of another person except to tell them that to put themselves above another is a bad thing.
I was particularly upset that this person was saying there was something that happened, and suddenly was being attacked for stating there had been a problem. Crimes do get committed against people, racist or not.
Paul
Once and final...You've either refused or are blinded to the obvious.
Good luck...........
The real tragedy, and the legacy of the black community, is that no one from the family Stanton has come forward to ID the other murderers........
All the welfare and educational assistance in the world is never going to solve the problem of the black communities, only they can. Till that happens, build a wall and only let the people out who have no intentions of returning..........
I’m not refusing to magically see something. Yes, the comment that generalized all people of one skin color as being violent offenders was racist. Was that because the person is racist? I don’t care. I just don’t care. It makes no difference to me. That’s the difference. A person can have a single racist comment/thought/etc, and not necessarily be a “racist”. If she is, fine. I don’t particularly want anything to do with her if she is.
All I know is that someone said that they had been attacked, and instead of saying “Oh, well that might explain why you have this wrong opinion”, and then working with the person to correct that wrong impression, that person was suddenly being accused of lying, and demands were made for the date, time, the name of the officer, the name of the building, etc. And frankly, that type of attitude is wrong too. Just because you don’t believe an incident took place doesn’t mean you’re on some moral high ground. And, don’t think that because you’ve said “once and final” like Al Gore does on the debate on Globull Warming, that you can just pronouce the debate and discussion over and you’ve won.
I put out two very severe incidents. I wonder if I’d started it with some comment that had been percieved as racist by you, would you have demanded the same level of “proof”? Because I can give you a majority of it. I can send you the links to the article in the newspaper on one of them. I can give you some of the court information. I can also tell you that one of the three perps is dead. Brutally and viciously murdered in a way that though I’m glad he’s no longer in the land of the living, I wouldn’t have wished upon anyone. You attacked and attacked because the person said something you didn’t like. Because I refuse to call her a racist on the head of the one comment she made that was racist, because I’ve never talked to her and don’t know her general attitude, and don’t know if the label actually fits or if it was a single incident propelled by a reaction to a negative experience, you’re looking down on me. I say you’re using the same emotional, knee-jerk reaction that many people use when dealing with race. If someone says something wrong once, then forever are they a racist. Me, I actually use logic and reason and rational thinking in the matter. If the person generally shows an attitude of racism, I will tend to believe it. David Duke. Jerimiah Wright. Al Sharpton. Was Don Imus a racist? Hell no. Did he say something that was a racist comment? I’m not sure. Did he say it to demean an entire race? No. He said it because the girls on the team presented themselves without the class and style that other teams do. And because he thought it was funny. Should Don Imus have been excoriated like he was? No. Punished? No. Fired? Hell no.
My whole argument, which you seem to look down on, is that we have to look at the person, the actions, and not a single bad comment. You seem to want to paint broad strokes. Brush anyone you can with the “R” label.
Unlike you, I believe that people can continue a discussion so long as there is still discussion to be had, and that I’m not some sort of dictator who can determine when the discussion is finished.
Paul
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