30 years of pain in lightening speed

 Hello my good readers, I have to take a deep breath to start this piece, as something happened to a member of my family recently that reminded me of episodes of violence and great sadness that didn't seem so long ago.  Then I  realized that 30 years (or more) have passed.  So much has changed for the better in the systematic response and management of emergencies, born out of one of the episodes -- but the episodes of senseless violence are still present.  So much still stays the same...for some but not all.  Part of that violence hit home within my inner circle, and it immediately made me think of an event that ended in a historic tragedy in Northeast (NE) Philadelphia.  NE Philly is a part of the city that is a part of me.  I'm a NE kid.  My friend Joe and I talk about our NE youth all the time..

Within days, the anniversary of that horrific event hit the news, it was then that I realized that 30 years had passed.  30 years had passed at lightening speed.  Over a six to seven year period there were four significant teenage deaths from senseless, extremely violent events.  Four teenage lives lost.  Three boys (Sean Daily, Freddy Adams, Eddie Polec), one girl (Christa Lewis).  The one girl is the one that came to the front of my mind just before the anniversary.   

Christa Lewis, just 16 years old, on May 3, 1996 went to a neighborhood carnival sponsored by the Mayfair athletic club.  Christa never came home.  Based on a senseless teenage disagreement and a "look," she was attacked and stabbed by another teen and died an hour later.  Forever young.  The memory of the tragic event had come flooding back to me like it happened last week because of the attack on a teenage member of my family.  A disturbing and horrifying attack by a group of girls.  Within days of the May 3 anniversary of 30 years hit the news.  I was left somewhat in disbelief that so much time had passed.

I can vividly remember her father, Greg, who seemed to be a slightly older version of myself.  Athletic, outspoken, honest with his emotions, angered and anguished, he stayed present as legal proceedings moved forward.  Greg Lewis reminded me of another father of a NE Philly  teenage murder victim.  John Polec- the father of Eddie Polec, a 16-year old Cardinal Dougherty student.   Both were ever present figures.  Sadly, Greg has passed on from this world.  

 The absolutely disturbing circumstances that lead to Eddie Polec's murder were national news two years before Christa Lewis killed. When Christa was murdered, a crowd from the close knitted neighborhoods around the park gathered on the night she died.  John Polec, from just two neighborhood's over also gathered with the Lewis family.  The two families forever connected because their teenage children were murdered.  Killed over misunderstandings and stupid teenage bravado. 

 The main attacker, Bou Khathavong, in the Eddie Polec case was from my current township, went to Abington High School, where my daughters graduated and where my granddaughter is a student.  My granddaughter is 16, none of the teens that were killed was older than 17.  Khathavong was recently deported to Laos- 32 years later.  In 1994 the Eddie Polec assault and murder was the third case of teenage on teenage assaults in five years.  It was unbelievably disturbing, to me, it was earth shaking.  I was  a young father, I had lived one neighborhood over in my childhood and later in the Fox Chase neighborhood where Eddie's family lived and where he died.

I lived in Fox Chase as an undergraduate college student and briefly after getting married.  I knew every place that was in the news like the back of my hand.  He was a student at the high school I would have attended if my parents hadn't moved out of the city.  All over a thrown cup of soda. A story that was morphed into an alleged and false rape.  A young life ended, savagely beaten with baseball bats on the steps of his church.  Randomly attacked for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The preceding murders were breaking news in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs but were not the national news of the Eddie Polec case.  Sean Daily in May,1989, also savagely beaten with bats, then shot and murdered for nothing- beaten for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The attackers didn't know him and he didn't know them. Beaten by a group of youths, the same way as Eddie Polec would be five years later.  The son of a Philly cop, he worked at a grocery store, just like I did as a teen.  It was a racially polarizing case as Sean was a Caucasian, his attackers were Latino and African-American.

 Freddy Adams was a 16 year old Northeast Catholic High School student, known colloquially as "NORTH," in March 1993.  Freddy was beaten with a pipe by another teen over a ridiculous slight.  Gruesome, horrifying. Freddy was named after his father who was also a North alum.  He was a member of the school's storied Catholic League soccer team.

In the Daily and Adams cases there came about political and legal changes in both the City of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania.  In the case of Eddie Polec, the broad failure of the emergency response (911) system became wildly apparent.  John Polec himself had a main hand in the improvement of the emergency response system.  John and Kathy Polec immersed themselves in the non-violent response and improvement of not just their Fox Chase neighborhood but the broader success of community in general.

The horrifying video of young teens beating on a member of my family was released as teen fools do, on the internet.  I am incensed, but an adult- so reacting with more than equal violence did not and will not happen.  Why the attack?  Teenage stupidity. A group attack.  Reacting with counterattacks won't improve anything... not for me, really, not for anyone.  John Polec would agree.  If they were still alive, Greg Lewis and Fred Adams would too.  In the painful process of writing this piece I've processed a lot of emotions and memories.  

While the 911 system was vastly improved, as one person wrote on an internet forum, "those that killed Eddie are out of jail and in their 40's and on with their lives.  Eddie is still dead."  The Sean Daily and Freddie Adams annual sports tournaments tournaments have provided non-violent outlets for youth.  Both have raised money for youth scholarships, and community improvements. 

Super-Philly gal Patty-Pat Kozlowski wrote in a 2019 Philadelphia Inquirer piece; "You can have the best kid in the world, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the social norm of pulling a trigger instead of throwing a punch can't be fixed."  Patty-Pat was in her youth, in her Philly neighborhood of Port Richmond when the Sean Daily murder occurred.  She chronicled how afterward the neighbors and the block kept the kids in close view and protected them.  Unfortunately, 30 years later gun violence claimed another teenager from the neighborhood in Campbell park.

In most of my pieces it ends with The Answerman says...However, instead I will echo, in paraphrase , the words of  Patty-Pat Kozlowski, "I do not want another sports tournament, mural or t-shirt in memory of another teenager gunned down in Philadelphia,"  The four forever young, Sean, Freddy, Eddie and Christa, could not be here and be middle-aged.  They didn't get a chance to have a life, to make mistakes and repair them. So we remember them here and realize that 30 years later there is still violent, stupid teenagers- but hopefully they will grow from their stupidity.

Be Good, Be Safe

Answerman