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heart
continued from page 1
a short time to live.
“My dad was a family man,” Shannon says. “My dad
would take me everywhere, I remember it like yesterday.
“I remember my dad braiding my hair, I remember him
taking me to the grocery store; my dad talked to me all the
time, he shared stories with me.
“I watched him cook, I watched him clean up — he was
a neat fanatic, our house always stayed clean.”
Shannon is the middle sister of four kids – her sisters are
‘People need to be reminded
not of how he died, but of what
he did when died’
Tamisha and Malicka and her brother is Bobby Jr., born
after his father’s death.
She recalls the books her father read – Strawberry Short-
cake was tops – and that when he taught her how to ride a
bike, that first bike was a pink Strawberry Shortcake design.
Shannon was just seven years old when he was shot.
“When my dad came home every day I just I looked for
him,” she says. “Not a day went by that I didn’t wait at that
door to see him come in.
“And I remember him telling me that every day is not
going to be a good day.”
Currently, Shannon is studying at PCC to become a crim-
inal youth probation officer, and she is active with student
government; she plans to transfer to Portland State Univer-
sity for a psychology degree. She volunteers as director of
the outreach ministries for Greater Solid Rock Church of
God in Christ, where she works with the homeless.
Shannon – herself the mother of a 15-year-old and a 17-
year-old — says her life was turned upside down when her
aunt plugged film of the heart transplant into her DVD just
two weeks ago.
“I got to see them bringing my dad’s heart, with the ice-
box, into the hospital — I actually got to sit there and see
the whole procedure and the doctors talking about it.
“That’s when it really dawned on me that this was my dad
who did this,” she says.
The idea of an event was her aunt’s way of bringing
Shannon into an active role in Donate Life Northwest,
Shannon says.
“’People need to be reminded not of how he died, but of
what he did when died, so let’s put this together,’ and when
she said that I said yes, Auntie.’”
Shannon says that her grandmother, Martha Van Arsdale,
was asked by doctors whether she would agree to donate
her son’s heart to a complete stranger — even as she was
told that her son was brain-dead.
“The doctor asked if she would donate the organ; she had
to think about it. She said she didn’t want to, but that she
had to talk to her heavenly father.”
Van Arsdale told the doctors that she could not donate her
son’s heart to a stranger – that she had to know the recipi-
ent’s name, which was strictly against the rules at the time.
“The doctor told her they could make that happen, and
Grandma said that, before she could even get up, her heav-
enly father spoke and said, ‘Go ahead give them the heart.’”
Van Arsdale she passed away three years ago.
The heart recipient and his wife have also since passed
Bobby’s daughter shannon Olive and his widow,
Anita ward.
away, but Shannon smiles as she shares a few funny stories
about them that have been passed down in her family.
“My grandmother asked Wesley’s wife if she minded that
her husband had the heart of a Black man,” Shannon says.
“Wesley’s wife said no – and that the new heart changed
his personality; he started to love jazz music and clean the
house, and now he liked to cook.”
For more information on Donate Life Northwest go to
www.donatelifenw.org.
Capital
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abolition bills the past several years, said
that the moratorium provides a “profound
shift” on the momentum for possible future
permanent bans.
“He has opened a legitimate conversation
that gives the Legislature the ability to not
only bring legislation forward in the coming
years, but to step up and engage the public
in that conversation,” he said.
There have been 78 inmates, all men, put
to death in Washington state since 1904.
Nine men currently await execution at the
Washington State Penitentiary in Walla
Walla. The state Supreme Court just last
month rejected a petition for release from
death row inmate Jonathan Lee Gentry, sen-
Nine men currently await execution at the
Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla
tenced for the murder of a 12-year-old girl
in 1988. Gentry could have been the first
execution in the state since September
2010, when Cal Coburn Brown died by
lethal injection for the 1991 murder of a
Seattle-area woman. A federal stay had
recently been lifted in Gentry’s case, and a
remaining state stay on his execution was
expected to be lifted this month.
Senate Republican Leader Mark
Schoesler of Ritzville said he thought
Inslee’s move was “out of touch.”
He noted that lawmakers have previously
rejected opportunities to pass such meas-
ures over the years, “because the public and
Legislature support keeping that tool.”
felony disenfranchisement on modern com-
munities of color remains both
disproportionate and unacceptable.”
In Iowa, action by the governor caused
the state to move from automatic restoration
of rights following completion of a criminal
tution to their victim, court costs, and
fines,” said Jimmy Centers, a spokesman
for Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.
Centers said the governor has no plans to
change the current process and that too
often, victims are forgotten.
Inslee’s action follows a recent decision
by the state Department of Corrections,
which is changing its protocol to allow wit-
nesses to executions to see the entire
process, including the insertion of intra-
venous catheters during a lethal injection.
The new witness protocol, in its final
stages of approval, includes the use of tele-
vision monitors to show the inmate entering
the death chamber and being strapped
down, as well as the insertion of the IVs,
which had both previously been blocked
from public view.
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Vote
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a career in law enforcement — prison over-
crowding, overly harsh mandatory drug
sentences and school disciplinary policies
that he says push kids into street crime.
Congress used to be the place that high-
lighted Holder’s problems, including a plan
to try terrorists in New York City and the
failed Justice Department investigation of
gun smuggling in Arizona that ended in the
death of a border patrol agent.
Now Holder is talking about partnering up
with conservative lawmakers like Sen.
Rand Paul, R-Ky., who shares concerns
such as mandatory minimum prison sen-
tences that can put away low-level drug
offenders for decades. On Tuesday, Holder
took note of the fact that Paul was to be a
participant in the criminal justice sympo-
sium later in the morning.
On a topic with racial overtones, Holder
said 2.2 million black citizens, or nearly one
in 13 African-American adults, are banned
from voting because of these laws, and he
said the ratio climbs to one in five in Flori-
da, Kentucky and Virginia.
“Although well over a century has passed
since post-Reconstruction states used these
measures to strip African-Americans of
their most fundamental rights, the impact of
Holder said 2.2 million black citizens, or nearly
one in 13 African-American adults, are banned
from voting because of these laws
sentence to an arduous process requiring
direct intervention by the governor in every
individual case, he said.
“It’s no surprise that, two years after this
change — of the 8,000 people who had
completed their sentences during that gov-
ernor’s tenure — voting rights had been
restored to fewer than 12,” the attorney gen-
eral added.
Reaction to the remarks was swift.
In Iowa, “the governor believes that when
an individual commits a felony, it is fair
they earn their rights back by paying resti-
If Holder has been on an aggressive
streak, it’s by design.
A year ago, he ordered up a review to find
areas in the Justice Department’s mission
that needed change.
The first results became public last
August, when Holder instructed federal
prosecutors to stop charging many nonvio-
lent drug defendants with offenses that
carry mandatory minimum sentences. He
said long mandatory terms have flooded the
nation’s prisons with low-level drug offend-
ers and diverted money away from crime
fighting.
A month ago, Holder joined Education
Secretary Arne Duncan in pressing the
nation’s schools to abandon disciplinary
policies that send students to court instead
of the principal’s office. The two Cabinet
officials said “we have found cases where
African-American students were disci-
plined more harshly and more frequently
because of their race than similarly situated
white students.”
Then over the weekend, Holder applied a
landmark Supreme Court opinion to the
Justice Department, declaring same-sex
spouses cannot be compelled to testify
against each other, should be eligible to file
for bankruptcy jointly and are entitled to the
same rights and privileges as federal prison
inmates in opposite-sex marriages.
His call for restoring voting rights for ex-
prisoners are part of what the attorney
general calls his “Smart On Crime” pro-
gram.
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February 12, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3