Twin 22-year-olds Albade and Obadiah Taylor were working on their stalled car on a busy Oakland street when they were fatally shot in February 2000. Their mother, Lorrain Taylor ’86, MHR ’88, first heard the news from her youngest son, Greg, who called her at home.
“He told me to stop what I was doing and pray for strength,” says Taylor. A newscast, he said, was reporting the murder of two young men with the same birthday; one had a small tattoo on his left shoulder: “Obadiah.”
“I never let my boys wear baggy pants or piercings,” says Taylor, who grew up in a Pentecostal church where everything from nail polish to make-up was a sin. “But Obadiah did have that tattoo, so there was no doubt that the victims on the news were my boys.”
Almost a decade later, their murders remain unsolved, yet Taylor has turned the tragedy into an opportunity to reach out to the families of homicide victims. She uses her experience not only to help others get their lives back on track after such a devastating loss but also to campaign against violence.
From her cramped Hayward living room, Taylor runs 1000 Mothers to Prevent Violence, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that offers understanding and a glimmer of hope to families directly affected by violence. Taylor has reached out to hundreds of families in crisis, sometimes bringing them donated groceries, other times letting them know about resources she wishes she’d known about after her sons’ deaths. Above all, what she provides is emotional support—with a hug, a smile, and sometimes a prayer.
“I saw this gap in the community where I knew I could make a difference,” says Taylor, a high-spirited gospel singer and community activist. “Mothers (affected by violence) are a faceless issue.”
Taylor’s organization also sponsors COPE (circle of prayer and empowerment) support groups and connects families with legal aid, professional counseling, financial advice, and moral support. Taylor also visits Bay Area prisons to encourage inmates to change their ways, speaks at public rallies against violence, and has taken an anti-violence stand through song on her gospel CD, Gumbo For My Soul.
For many survivors of violence, however, the grief is so debilitating that it becomes difficult to even get out of bed. They often have to be reminded to do the simple life-sustaining things such as sleeping and drinking water, says Cristina Barron, victim advocate at the Carole Sund/Carrington Foundation, which awarded Taylor with its namesake award. “The event eclipses everything else that goes on in their world,” she says.
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