Brenda Hines still likes to refer to her son, Donovan Hines, as her “favorite son,” the same way he liked to refer to himself before he was killed on Nov. 13, 2017.
Donovan was driving near North 29th Street and West Hampton Avenue in Milwaukee when he was struck by a stray bullet and crashed through a fence and into a home in the 4700 block of North 29th Street.
In the months that followed, Brenda Hines said she sank into such a deep, dark grief that she cried daily, unable to eat or work. She even contemplated taking her own life.
“It took me a while to get out of the state of shock,” Hines said. “It was very difficult, spiritually, for me to come back.”
Now, almost a decade later, she has turned that pain into hope by building The Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance Co, a Milwaukee nonprofit that offers consistent, community-based support for families grieving violent loss.
“Exuberance means vibrant. And that’s what Donovan was. He always came out with a smile on his face,” Hines said.
After the unexpected loss of her son, Hines connected with the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Project UJIMA, a collaborative, multidisciplinary program geared to stop violent behavior patterns and reduce the number of children hurt by violence. Meeting with Project UJIMA once a month was helpful and inspired Hines to begin her own grief group that met more frequently.
“Being a person of color, we don’t seek therapy, and we have so much trauma, so much violence going on,” Hines said.
Hines hosted her grief group weekly for about a year, with the support of the late Bishop Sedgwick Daniels of Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ.
“That was the beginning of my healing process,” Hines said. “Not only listening to someone else, but being there for myself.”
Seven months after her loss, Hines was asked to continue her work with The Salvation Army Chaplaincy Program, in partnership with the Milwaukee Police Department. She was asked to serve as a chaplain on a case that hit close to home, helping a family who had just lost their son, who was the same age as Donovan, to suicide.
“It gave me something to hope for,” Hines said. “That’s when I started coming back out and decided to start having empowerment groups and transformation stuff for grief.”
Ever since then, she’s kept going, growing her nonprofit in any way she can, whether it be through the Summer Meal Program for children, the emergency food pantry or senior stockboxes.
“I just kept going and going. I was like, ‘OK, I’m still not doing enough,” Hines said. “The more I help others, it seems like, the more it helps me.”
Hines, along with several other Milwaukee nonprofits, hosted a survivor-led candlelight vigil to join a National Moment of Remembrance in December. The vigil centered on healing and the belief that everyone deserves the freedom to live.
On the hardest days, what keeps Hines going is “God first, my family and the foundation.”
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
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