By HANNAH PHILLIPS, Palm Beach Post
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — To know if a mother’s heart has broken, look for Angela Williams on her street
She’s usually hard on the heels of death, appearing at sites of fatal shootings across Palm Beach County to comfort those left in its wake. It only takes a text — man murdered on Sapodilla Avenue — to get her out of bed, her mind racing. Who is it this time?
That time, it was her nephew. He’s one of 23 family members Williams has lost to gun violence since 1999. The first was Williams’ 12-year-old niece Christina Elam, shot to death in a car in Riviera Beach, then another nephew, Torrey Manuel, 29, killed with an AR-15 four years later.
Their portraits take up an entire wall at the Mothers Against Murderers Association, headquartered in a strip mall along Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. Founded after Manuel’s death in 2003 and nearing its 20th birthday, MAMA has become a haven to 480 grief-stricken women and their families.
“They’re screaming, hollering and crying. You hug them and say, I’m here. I’m here, don’t you worry. I’m here,” said Williams, its founder. “I’m on call 24 hours a day for you. If you call me and I don’t answer, I guarantee I will call you back.”
Manuel’s death tore a hole so big in his mother Georgie Dixon’s heart, Williams didn’t think it would ever close.
She’d sit in the parking lot of Winn-Dixie with her car windows rolled up and scream her son’s name. Williams started to keep the ringer on her cellphone on always, accustomed to dropping everything to drive to her sister’s side. Time passed, but the calls didn’t slow.
Please, God, Williams said she prayed one day as she drove down 45th Street. Give me an answer so I can help my sister.
She had no training in grief counseling — Williams was a 44-year-old school bus driver at the time, with aspirations to become a teacher — but she threw herself after the idea of the Mothers Against Murderers Association once it took hold of her mind.
“I did not see this for myself,” Williams said. “But I know I’m going to be doing it the rest of my life.”
Officials reported 56 killings in Palm Beach County this year alone, according to a Palm Beach Post online database. These deaths don’t grip the public in the way that mass shootings do, Williams said, but their toll on the community is untold.
“When you have a person getting killed every day, that adds up,” she said. “We’ve got ourselves a mass shooting, just over different days of the week.”
Helping mothers through their grief is what’s kept Williams from succumbing to her own. She’s a frequent presence at crime scenes, often called there by the police to provide emotional support for the parents left behind.
Parents like Sharon Danford, whose 17-year-old son Se’Sawn Danford was killed in 2014. She walked into his Mangonia Park apartment, not yet knowing that he was dead, or what it meant that Williams was there, too.
“When I walked in the house, something hit me. Something’s strange, you know,” Danford said. “I had this feeling of disconnect.”
Since that night, spaghetti with hot dogs has been a staple at the potlucks Williams hosts for the mothers. It was Se’Sawn’s favorite food.
In addition to potlucks, toy drives and fundraisers for victims’ families, the MAMA headquarters is home to the Circle of Healing — a sort of ad hoc therapy session where there’s no wrong way to grieve. Danford drives there twice a month with a box of tissues in her purse, and another in the glove box.
Meeting like this for nearly 20 years, Williams has learned to never expect when, or if, a mother might come out of her grief. She says she knows the cues to watch for when someone’s day was bad, and what to do when she sees them.
Her closet’s usually stocked with at least one funeral-ready outfit, Williams said (she went to three in a day once). She goes to bed with her phone charged, knowing it might ring in the night. Though there’s no telling what each day will bring, there’s one thing Williams believes is certain.
“Til the day I die, I’m going to help these families,” she said.
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