Sam Lockridge has considered it, come close even, but still can’t quite bring himself to write to the man who murdered his sister.
Why my sister? he wants to ask him. Why her?
Five years later, the burden of her death still weighs on him. He struggles against depression. An 18-year-old senior at Schlagle High School, Sam takes college courses as part of a dual enrollment program with the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He will attend Florida A&M University in the fall.
College, his teachers have told him, will be even more challenging than Schlagle, where he has already set a high bar for himself. He maintains an A average, plays basketball, runs track, and performs in the school marching band and with Releve, a dance troupe of the Kansas City, Kan., School District that practices Monday nights.
He has loved dancing ever since he began imitating a tap dancer he saw on “Sesame Street.” The way he moved. The joy on his face. Sam taught himself watching movies. Tap, ballet, jazz, hip hop. Sam dances to relax.
However, he never fully relaxes.
His sister Tameika Jackson died June 10, 2002. According to court testimony, Darrell Lamont Stallings fatally shot her and four others, motivated by revenge for the attempted robbery and beating of his mother that April.
Prosecutors said that Stallings shot two people, killing one, because he thought they played a role in the crime, and that he killed Tameika and three others because they were witnesses. He was sentenced to five consecutive “hard 50” life terms.
Sometimes Sam thinks it would be better to visit Stallings than write to him. Why’d you do it? Face to face. He can’t forgive him, but perhaps meeting him would lead to acceptance.
“Sam the man!” a custodian shouts to him in the high school cafeteria.
Sam, wearing a faded striped shirt and jeans, waves and smiles a weary grin that barely stretches into his cheeks. Between two part-time jobs, he averages 50 to 60 hours a week. In the afternoon and some weekends, he sells shoes at the Nike outlet store in The Legends shopping center. He also works the graveyard shift at Federal Express and gets off about 7 a.m.
Despite his work hours, he holds a 4.3 grade-point average. In April he was one of 50 high school seniors nationwide out of 90,000 applicants who won a $20,000 scholarship from the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. Sam flew to Atlanta for the awards ceremony. Schlagle staff helped with his travel expenses, including a donation of $500 from special education teacher David Flick, who never had Sam as a student but was impressed by his accomplishments.
Sam catches up on his sleep wherever he can. He often takes a pillow to school and naps in the band room before his classes.
Band director Reginald May worries that Sam pushes himself too hard. Sam, a drum major, has asthma. You don’t know how not to give 100 percent, he tells Sam. Tone it down. You’ll have an asthma attack.
Yes, Daddy May, says Sam.
Sam hasn’t seen his father in years. He lives with his grandmother, who takes care of his mother. She has multiple sclerosis and is blind and paralyzed from the neck down. She has been sick all of Sam’s life. It hurts him to see her so ill and using a wheelchair. He spends very little time at home. He text-messages Mr. May whenever his mother is hospitalized.
“A lot of you know what it’s like not to have a father,” Sam told an assembly of Schlagle students on Tuesday when the school recognized him for his scholastic achievements. “A lot of you know I call Mr. May ‘Daddy May.’ This is why. Mr. May has been that father figure to me. He keeps me up when I need it. So I dedicate this award to him.”
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