Still an Inspirational Story: 10 Years Later

Check out this story that ran in the Chicago Sun-Times's Sunday edition.

And then check out this story that Michele Kurtz and I wrote for The Times of Northwest Indiana more than a decade ago. 

I covered hundreds of stories as a newspaper reporter back in the late eighties and early nineties, before I traded in the reporter's notebook for the legal pad. But some stories stick in your mind more than others.

When I first met Kweisi, his name was Robert Dunlap, and his story is one of those that stuck. I remember talking to him in the Markham courthouse, after Eric Taylor and Jonathan Judkins were sentenced to life in prison for the 1992 kidnapping and execution-style murder of his brother, James Lemar Ford, 17.   

And I remember going to see him again, at his mother's home, almost a year after the sentencing, and talking to him about how he had rechanneled the pain and anger into poetry and rededicated his life to his brother's memory. It's nice to read, ten years later, that he has lived up to that story Michele and I wrote back in 1995, and although his brother's life was senselessly cut short, it, to this day, remains a life not wasted.  

Update on Monday, April 10, 2006 at 08:11AM by Randy Richardson

Here's where you can order N'nocent Rage, a collection of Kweisi's poetry.

Comments

[Kweisi]

Peace. Thanks for following me. I just read your entry, your words encourage and inspire me to keep doing what I am doing.

Thats Love,
Kweisi