Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [82]
But as a result of my son’s death, I have joined other caring people to try to make a pathway with knowledge and understanding within our public school system, a pathway that in time may be traveled with dignity and freedom from fear, for gay and lesbian students, and any student who is subjected to discrimination.
Promise me you will keep trying.
Bobby gave up on love. I hope you won’t. You are always in my thoughts.
With love, Mary Griffith.
The combined impact of Bobby’s saga and Mary’s turnaround touched a public nerve. Readers jammed phone lines at the paper. Letters poured in. The reporter, Lily Eng, herself a lesbian in her mid-twenties just beginning to deal with her own coming out, basked in her colleagues’ praise. She declared that this was the most emotionally exhilarating story of her career (an assessment that held up five years later). An item about the Bobby Griffith Memorial Scholarship, which had run with the package, drew thousands of dollars in contributions.
Ed Griffith was reading the article at work Sunday morning when a fellow policeman came by. “That’s my mom,” Ed said. The policeman glanced at the article and asked, “What do you think about what she is doing?”
“I think it’s great,” Ed said. “I’m really proud of her.”
The policeman hesitated for a moment, then blurted, “Did you know that I’m gay?” Ed looked at his bulky, football-player-sized colleague and said, “No, of course not. But I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.” The policeman went on to become a family friend and, in fact, participated in classroom talks with Mary, as the ultimate role model: an out gay cop.
Mary was excited by the Examiner package and the reactions it was getting. (Even mother Ophelia told her, “Mary, you are really doing a good thing for people.”) She noticed again the power of words to move people. She hoped that parents as well as children would take the message to heart. She let her mind play with these thoughts, and it struck her that a parent’s words to a child can kill the child’s spirit or give it wings. In that way parents have the power of life and death over their kids. The things we say to our children in the name of love, she thought, can be lethal. She remembered the quote from psychiatrist Erik Erikson that Project 10 used in its literature: “Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed…public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.”
In that connection, one letter in particular tore at her heart. It was signed, merely, “Corey,” and was dated the same Sunday on which the Examiner story had appeared.
“I felt as if I were reading about myself,” Corey wrote.
Everything that Bobby believed is what I believe. I have never told my family or friends the truth, and I never, ever will. I want to fit into this society so badly and I never will be able to as gay. All I want to do is to be able to function as a normal straight man. But I cannot and I hate myself for it. I do not fit in anywhere.
I was brought up in a semi-religious household. I was told that God thinks homosexuals are bad…. Why the hell did he create them then?! Every single day I pray about ten times for God to make me straight.
I sit here and think, “Why couldn’t Bobby and my paths have crossed?” We could have shared our fears with each other, shared our dreams. I could have been the friend he needed—he could have been the friend I need…. I have considered suicide but…I couldn’t do that. But there have been times when I’ve wished someone else would do the job.
Well, thank you for listening. You might have saved my life. But do not try to convince me to tell the world…. I can’t handle life. Bobby will be my beacon, my light of hope. I AM NOT ALONE…. I’ll never be happy. But I can struggle through it. And, don’t you worry, Mrs. Griffith. I shall not give up on love.
But she did worry. No last name. No address. For weeks the vision of Corey haunted her. She felt at once responsible and helpless. If anything, letters like these increased