Jean Corbett-Parker, 58, is a Branch Specialist at Wachovia Securities, and a longtime resident of Harlem, having been raised in West Palm Beach, Florida.  Her son, LaTraun Parker, died on April 28, 2001 outside a nightclub at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 131th Street, when an assailant unknown to him placed a gun at the back of his head, and squeezed the trigger.  At the time of his death, LaTraun Parker was 26 years old.

“For two and a half years, I couldn’t walk in a crowd without holding the back of my head,” Ms. Corbett-Parker said.  “When I lost my son, I was a lunatic.

I was just walking.”  Eventually, she decided to put her grief to good use, and became one of the founding members of Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E.

“What am I afraid of -- making a difference,” she asked.  “A lot of the things people worry about, I don’t worry about anymore.  You wake up in the morning and think, ‘Thank God, I made it.’”

Jackie Rowe-Adams, 58, is a New York City Parks Department recreation manager at Morningside and Jackie Robinson Parks.  

Ms. Rowe-Adams has lost two children to gun violence.  In February of 1982, her 17-year-old son Anthony was murdered outside a bodega at 123rd Street in Harlem, by two young men who believed that Anthony had been staring at them.  Then, her son Tyrone, age 28 at the time, was shot to death by a thirteen-year-old during a robbery outside his apartment in Baltimore, Maryland.  

Speaking of her two losses, Ms. Rowe-Adams observed, “Either I was going to hate teenagers, or I was going to do something.”  She decided to do something, and along with Jean Corbett-Parker, founded Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E.

“If I can save another mother’s child, my life was not a waste,” she concluded.