I just want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who had something to do with rounding her or having something to do with who she was.Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, mother of slain Chicago teenager Hadiya Pendleton • Speaking at her daughter’s funeral on Saturday. Hadiya, who had performed at President Barack Obama’s inauguration just three weeks ago, was killed less than a mile from her home in a neighborhood park. First Lady Michelle Obama attended the teenager’s funeral, and many political figures, including the president and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have offered support to Hadiya’s family. Her godfather, Damon Stewart, made an effort to emphasize that her life shouldn’t be used as a political tool, but that her loss, like those of many others lost by gun violence, should be personal in nature. “Don’t let this turn into a political thing. Keep it personal,” he said. “A lot of politicians will try to wield it as a sword. They want to use it for votes.”
Ten-year-old Nathaniel Pendleton Jr. recalled the way his big sister Hadiya would often greet him with a few gentle slaps on his cheeks whenever she came home from school.
“She said it was with love,” he said.Nathaniel etched “I miss you” and “I love you” on his arm Wednesday, a day after losing his only sibling when a gunman opened fire on a group of students just blocks from King College Prep on the South Side.
While it’s hard to say any single death is more important than another (particularly in a place where young people are dying so frequently), we suspect that Hadiya Pendleton’s time in Washington D.C. last week will make her death an intense topic of discussion as the gun control debate continues around the nation. Our hearts go out to the Pendletons, and all of Hadiya’s other family and friends, during what we can only imagine to be one of the most difficult times of their lives.
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