Allan Appel Photo
Denisha Brown and Miranda McCrae at their brother’s vigil.
A bullet made William “Tuggy” Brown 2011’s first New Haven murder victim. But today his heart is keeping another man alive. His kidneys are keeping two little girls alive. A woman has his pancreas.
At a candlelight vigil on Saturday night, Brown’s sisters Denisha (right in photo) and Miranda gathered at Crown Fried Chicken on Dixwell Avenue in Newhallville, where their baby brother was murdered two months ago.
(Click here to read details of the shooting and aftermath.)
With the sisters Saturday night were their mom Donna Brown (shown here with Crown’s owner and Tuggy’s friend Eddie Rodriguez) and 25 other family members and friends.
They came carrying candles, balloons, and posters with “Rest in Peace” and other memorial messages. And they came with a plan to keep Tuggy Brown’s memory alive.
They also brought news that far more than his memory is already alive, in locations and lives far removed from Newhallville.
That was due to a difficult decision about organ donation that the family had come to.
It occurred between the time Brown was shot on Jan. 11 and his breathing his last on Jan. 16 at the Hospital of St. Raphael.
“His heart went to a 60-year-old man, his kidneys went to a 2- and a 4‑year-old child, and his pancreas went to a 60-year-old woman,” said Denisha Brown.
Miranda McCrae described receiving the news of the successful transplantation of their brother’s organs last week: “When I opened the letter and saw he gave life to a 2‑year-old girl and a 4‑year-old girl [in particular], I cried.”
Denisha Brown said that the man who received her brother’s heart had been on a mechanical device. “If we can help one person breathe, one person’s kidneys work,” that helps with dealing with the grief and the sense of loss, she said.
The decision was especially difficult as the family watched Brown struggling on life support for four days and ultimately slipping away while having to answer the doctors’ necessarily pressing questions, said McCrae.
They were helped in the decision about the major organs when a friend told them he had had a conversation with Tuggy about organ donation. Tuggy, a healthy and gregarious 24-year-old, had approved of the process, the friend said.
In the end the family did not want to relinquish the skin or the eyes, Denisha Brown said; a reporter did not press as to why.
At the vigil yet another way to keep Brown’s name alive emerged.
The family announced plans for the William Jerome Brown Foundation. Its purpose: to raise enough money to rent space in Newhallville for classes for job training, computers, and alternatives expression for young people’s anger.
Denisha added that the classes should include groups for mothers who have lost children to gun violence.
Brown’s mother Donna, a religious woman, said: “If we don’t stand up for our community and our children, who will?”
“There is no malice in my heart,” she said. Then she added that communal solutions lie not violence but God.
The family said it is satisfied with the police investigation of the murder — someone is in custody — but dissatisfied with the lack of public attention to the case.
“There’s a blip on the TV [when the murder occurred] and then nothing else. When it happened reporters came, then not one came to the court appearances or the funeral. We want to keep our brother’s name alive,” said Denisha Brown.
In remarks evoking Tuggy’s life and character, she and others described him as a mediator, a person who would advise others to be real, to chill and not resort to the kind of violence whose victim he ended up being.
Yes, he had a criminal record, Denisha Brown said. “But lots of great people have records.”
“He was loved by a lot of people,” she added.
Whether their foundation is successful or not, that circle of love surely now has grown to include four more people to whom Brown, in his death, has given life.
The contact to make donations to the fledgling foundation is Tuggy Brown’s mom Donna, at 203 – 298-2090.