He escaped York's violence ... and thrived (2024)

Kim Strong|kstrong@ydr.com

Montrel Morgan packed his basketball, his favorite Jordans,suitcases and photographs of his life intohis family'sKiaanddrove out of York, the city of his childhood.

This is where his mother raised him for seven years and his father held him tight for another 11, the city where he became a basketball champion and a valedictorian, where he learned that who you associate with helps to define you. And it’s the place where he lost a friend, a fellow basketball star, a handsome boy with a dream of his own, taken instantly with a gunshot to the head. Another senseless shooting in York.

The picture is bleak, as inner-city shootings between angry rivalshave become a way of life, not just in York but in cities across the country.Manyof the victimsaremen younger than 30, often associated withgangs, carrying illegal guns.

“If you decide to do those things, nobody makes it out clean,” said Sam Sutton, a William Penn grad and business owner. “There are only two ways: dead or in jail, dead or in jail, dead or in jail.”

But Montrel Morganbuilt a path without carrying a gun, without a pack of friends running the streets at night, and without selling drugs. He triedto find light in every dark corner he faced, then he worked like mad to get out of the corner.

He's a tall, attractive18-year-old with an easy smile and gentle charisma, belying a competitive spirit and unwavering focus. He watches the History Channel,plays the piano or hangs out with his friends orgirlfriendwhen he's not on the basketball court. At night, he reads devotionals provided by his grandmother.

His charm contradictsthe struggles. The sirens and arguments he heard on South Queen Street as a kid weren't as bad as thesilence: the illness of his mother, the loneliness of changinghomes, the lossof his favorite school, the brother in jail, and the murder of a friend.

Singular voices guided him through all of that; theytoldhim tobecome someone specialin a community that doesn't revel inits success stories.

And he listened.

Montrel lived part of his first seven years in a red brick two-story rowhouse at 560 S.Queen St. This is wherehis familymoved after their mother got sick.

Lonisha Morgan had cancer, a brain tumor that would alter the course of all their lives. The first disruptioncame from Montrel's stepfather, who left in the midst of Lonisha's illness, forcing the family to move in with their grandmother on South Queen, Lonisha said.

It was a rowdy neighborhood, vastly different than the one Lonisha remembers from her childhood growing up in the same house, 20 years earlier.

“At night, those would be the scariest times ‘cause that’s when you’d hear gunshots or some other wild, crazy stuff,” Montrel said. “I remember the first time I heard gunshots. We heard them. They were pretty much right outside the front door.”

The family hadwaited inside quietly for the violence to dissipate, and when they finally walked out, they found a car pierced by bullets, Montrel said.

The shootings and violence weren't explained to the boy. "It was just known," he said. "Just growing up in the city, you just know what’s going on."

In the commotionof South Queen, Lonisha strictly disciplined her children, as her mother had raised her. Montrel and his half brothers, Anthony and Shayvon Morgan, couldwalk only to the corner and turn around. "You couldn't go further than she could see," Montrel said. She was their rock, a strong woman with a deep faith.

Her strength finally faltered at age 30when her brain tumorrequired surgery,and Lonisha couldn't care for her boys any longer. The boys went separate ways:the two older oneswith their grandparents, 7-year-oldMontrel with the father hedidn't know very well.

Montrel's mother took up residence at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her tumorwas removed, butdays later she suffered a stroke, she said.

She talked to her boy every day on the phone, as he adjusted to his new life, a childhoodapart from the three people he knew best in the world.

"He always asked me how I was doing. We talked about school and sports," Lonisha said. "He always stayed more upbeat."

He didn't tell her abouttheache in his heart.

“I’d get off the phone and cry for so long,” Montrel said.

Montrelhid the sadness from his dad, but there were moments when the little boy's pain tumbled out.

“He was young enough that he wasn't totally able to verbalize all of those things that he felt,” his father said, lowering his eyes, pushing tears away. “There was a time where we were at the kitchen table, and he was reading to me, and he just broke down crying."

Montrel had moved from a home with two brothers and his mom to a bigger house with more people in a quieter part of the city, out on the 500 block of West King Street.

His father, Montez Parker, a broad-shouldered man who works now as an above-wingsupervisorat Harrisburg International Airport,kept a watchful eye on his brood of children, fiveincluding Montrel.

“I don't tell them: ‘Hey, go outside and play,’” Montezsaid. If one of the kidswanted to go to the park, the whole family would go. He wanted to know what his kids were doing and who they associated with. He doesn’t relate to the freedom some children have to roam solo.

"You see a 10-year-old kid riding his bike down the street, and you’re like, 'What in the world?'” Montezsaid.

Sam Sutton.Mike Smith. John Moroney. David Archer. Anthony Hall. They were mentors.

Jamal Jordan. Sherby Hector. Friends.

Mom. Dad. Stepmom. Sisters. Brothers. Cousins. Grandparents.Educators. A village.

They know what can happen to a kid in the city. Most of them witnessed the slow choke of poverty and what it could do to a person.

Sam Sutton moved from low-income housing in New York into his father's York homeat 14, but still, every city has a dark underbelly. To avoid it, he focused on basketball, eventually recruited fromWilliam Penn by a Division I college. He nowteachesyoung basketball dreamers the moves and strategies of the court through his business, Sam Sutton's Skills Academy Basketball Camp. Montrel, who had been carrying a basketball for as long as he can remember, has beenone of those students for about a third of his life.

Sutton's friend, David Archer, also crossed paths with Montrel as his coach at New Hope Academy Charter School. "I'm from the inner city. My mom was on drugs. My dad was absent," said Archer, who grew up in Harrisburg. He gotit. The kids who played for him needed more than an after-schoolactivity, and he gave it to them: pizza nights and video games at his house, a safe place for the team.

"Basketball is one thing that kept [Archer and me]both sane and out of prison and out of graveyards," said Sutton, 37.

Mike Smith, 48, knows the temptations ofthe streets. He lived part of his life there and did time in jail for it. He even lost his brother to the dark side, killed near Parkway after a drug deal, Smith said. A program through the York's YWCAconnected Smith to young people and allowed him to lead them, take them to colleges, show them the way,tofind an alternative to his brother's life and death.

In the eight years he has runtheYWCA'sQOP(Quantum Opportunities Program)forcity high school students, 100 percent of his students have graduated to college. Smith mentors, monitors and, sometimes, admonishes50 students, from freshmen to seniors, as they navigate high school.Typically, about a dozen seniors each year headto college from his program; this year, it was his biggest class: 20. Montrel, whose father grew up with Smith, was one of them.

Smith, Archer and Sutton understand the fragile foundation they walk on. They live in a city where young men die or get shot too oftenfromplaying with a lethal combination ofillegal activities and guns.

The drug business. The robbery business. Gangs. Anger. Disrespect. Retaliation.

"The violence is all over [the country], but it seems to strike closer here, probably because you know everybody here," Montez Parker said.When hegrew up in the"projects," as he describedParkway, fist fights settled arguments, not gunfire.

Montrel wasn't tempted. He and friends like Jamal Jordan andSherby Hector stayed busy, studied, played ball."I think people do things for other people. They want people to think they'recool. They want to feed their own ego. I think it's just stupid, honestly," Montrel said.

John Moroney, a 76-year-old former guidance counselor at William Penn who lives close to the city's center, keeps photos and newspaper clippings of hisformer students who have died in York’s shootings, framed memorials that hang on the wall in his second floor.He has been an educator in Virginia and Washington, D.C., and was once a religious brother in a monastery.He talks about York's shooting deathsas a grieving uncle might -- the young peoplehe helped get to college, the ones who ditched their dreams and returned to York, and the ones who died here.

"Our city is the perfect example of how we have failed the African-American man," Moroney said. “As long as you’re roaming the streets of York with nothing … you can be tempted. And so many are tempted.”

He escaped York's violence ... and thrived (2024)

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