WASHINGTON — A D.C. mother is determined to make sure her babies are remembered.
Shanda Smith's two oldest children were murdered on December 17, 1993.
She said it was a case of mistaken identity in which someone fired into a car where her 19-year-old son, Rodney, and her 14-year-old daughter, Volante were sitting with two neighbor kids.
The neighbors survived. Her kids didn't.
"Years of running around in circles, grief, I decided to do something about it," Smith said.
It started out with Smith hosting Christmas parties for local kids.
Then, she took a trip to St. Louis, MO and Jackson, TN and met other moms who had lost children to violence.
That's where she discovered "Faces Not Forgotten," a non-profit made up of artists working together to create a commemorative, ever-growing quilt filled with portraits of kids who were lost to gun violence.
"We going to move forward. My thing is forgiveness, and that’s the main thing, I had to forgive," Smith said. "These are my kids. They’re alive in my heart. Turn the grief into what would Rodney be doing? What would Boo be doing?"
Smith is spearheading the effort to collect pictures from families in D.C.
For her, it's about having a reason to get up every day.
"To keep going. To keep going," Smith said. "Because if I had to do it my way, I wouldn’t be doing anything."
Now, she has high hopes for this project.
Her goal is to help collect photos from all 50 states to display on multiple quilts one day on the National Mall. Then, she says families across the entire country will know that their child will be remembered.
To submit photos, you can contact Shanda Smith on her Facebook page, linked above.