Their children have died, their motherhood remains

Boston Globe

10-05-2025

These mothers walk, grieve, celebrate, and uplift each other during the yearly walk through Dorchester on a day that is tremendously difficult for those who have lost a child.
Chaplain Clementina Chéry placed her hand against a Traveling Memorial banner that hangs inside the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in Dorchester. After Chéry lost her son Louis D. Brown in 1993, she started to make buttons for other victims' families as a way to cope with her son's death and to recognize the other families in her situation and make them feel less alone.
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Chaplain Clementina Chéry
Chaplain Clementina Chéry cofounded the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute after her son Louis David Brown was killed while heading to a Teens Against Gang Violence meeting. Louis was supposed to call his mother when he got to the meeting, but the call never came. He was struck by crossfire.
The day Louis died, changed Chéry forever.
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'I say, the day Louis died, is the day I woke up,' Chéry said. 'Why are we OK when this happens to Black and brown children?'
A year after Louis's death, Chéry cofounded the Peace Institute to honor her son and help other families deal with the trauma and grief associated with the killing of a loved one.
Chaplain Clementina M. Chéry (center) who cofounded the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in 1994 after the death of her 15-year-old son Louis, led the Mother's Day Walk for Peace in 2022.
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'Many times, what we tend to do, is we want to shame mothers for grieving. No. Grief is just how much we loved the person who is no longer here,' she said.
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In 1996, Chéry and a small group did the first peace walk on Mother's Day, connecting mothers who had lost a child. This year will be the 29th walk.
Even in death, Chéry is grateful to Louis and her two other children for being her best teacher.
'Louis wasn't my son, he is my son,' she said.
Chéry still does not know who killed her son.
The Louis D. Brown Peace Institute has been serving the Boston community for over 30 years. The group has recently gotten plans approved to open a three-story center in Dorchester.
LaToya Minus held hands with her 3-year-old granddaughter, Dai'Lani Jenkins-Minus, as the two visited the grave of Dai'Lani's mother in Roslindale. Dai'Lani was only 2 months old when her mother was killed. 'I still have to explain it to the 3-year-old as she gets older. She has no idea what's going on around that," Minus said of the difficult conversation that she will some day have to have with the child she is now raising as her own.
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LaToya Minus
LaToya Minus was making Thanksgiving dinner in 2021, waiting for her daughter Dejah Nichole Jenkins-Minus to arrive. The family dinner never took place. Instead, she received the news that her daughter was found dead, allegedly the victim of domestic violence.
Leaving Minus without her eldest daughter thrust her into becoming the mother to Dejah's 2-month-old daughter, Dai'Lani, who reminds her of Dejah more and more every day.
Minus says chasing Dai'Lani around keeps her going but it's the inevitable conversation about Dejah that weighs heavily on her.
LaToya Minus displayed the memorial tattoo of her late daughter, Dejah Jenkins-Minus.
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'I feel like the worst is yet to come,' she said. 'I still have to explain to the 3-year-old what happened to her mother.'
Minus said a trial in her daughter's death is set to begin in July. Last year, the Boston City Council declared May 13 as 'Maé Day' in memory of Dejah. Minus affectionately called her 'Maé' because, she said, Dejah acted like a little old lady.
Kianna Battle in the bedroom of her late son, Kamari Perry, inside the apartment they shared in Weymouth. Kamari, a basketball star, beloved by his friends and family, was killed in a vehicular homicide when he was 16 years old in 2023.
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Kianna Battle
Kianna Battle lost more than her son on July 14, 2023. She lost her best friend, her everything, when Kamari Aaron Perry, 16, was hit by a car while on a scooter.
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Perry wanted to be a basketball player. Battle says Kamari still receives college basketball recruiting letters.
'My son was so giving of himself to his peers. I've been trying to follow in his footsteps and give back myself,' Battle said. 'I'm just trying to turn my pain into purpose.'
Kianna Battle opened the blinds in the room of her late son, Kamari, at the apartment they shared in Weymouth. She has started a basketball tournament in his memory and is working on starting a foundation to help keep his legacy alive.
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Battle recently organized a basketball tournament in memory of Kamari called Mari's World Heart of Hope, where she was able to give away a $5,000 scholarship.
This will be Battle's second year participating in the Peace Walk. She says the walk does bring sad memories but also serves as a way to uplift each other.
'We're all a part of a club we don't want to be a part of,' she said. 'But it's uplifting because we're there for each other, we uplift each other, we hold each other when we hold this walk and we come together as one.'
Tears streamed down Beatriz Couho's face as she talked about her late son, Joel Leon, at her apartment in Quincy. He was fatally shot in South Boston on April 9, 2014. His killing is still unsolved. 'No mother, no father, grandmother, brother, sister, nobody who loves someone needs this kind of feeling. A mother is a mother and the pain is there every single day, we have to try to live with that. It is every single day, it is not a week or month. It is every single day," Couho said.
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Beatriz Couho
It was Friday during Lent and like many Catholics, the Couho family had to refrain from eating red meat. But on this particular Friday in 2014, it was the baby of the family's birthday. Joel Santiago Leon Couho was turning 19 and he was sick of eating fish every Friday. After promising his mother, Beatriz Couho, he would go to church if she made him steak, the family delighted in eating their food and poking fun at Beatriz for breaking the rules.
It was a perfect day. Three days later, the family would be rocked by the sudden death of Joel who was hit by a lone bullet that came into his car and struck him in the neck.
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Couho had brought Joel from Mexico when he was 2 months old. He was with her throughout the entire journey to the United States and just like that he was gone.
Beatriz Couho placed her hand against a statue of St. Joseph after lighting a candle in memory of her son inside St. Francis Chapel in Boston.
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'I learn to live, I learn how to live with this, and it took me 10 years to put myself together, and start to do things for people,' she said. 'Some days I'm down, some days I'm up, but I learned to live and that new process in my life.'
Beatriz Couho works on an initiative of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute called 'Pan con Café,' where she works with Spanish speakers dealing with the death of loved ones due to homicide, overdose, and suicide.
Randy Vazquez can be reached at