FRANKLYN REMEMBERED
Crowds gather to remember slain UMass student
By Dan O'Brien, Collegian Staff
October 24, 2005
More than 300 people packed into the Malcom X Center at the University of Massachusetts on Friday evening to celebrate the life of a slain student.
Franklyn Nwachukwu, 20, was shot to death on July 15 in the Hyde Park section of Boston. He was killed while two men tried to rob him of his chain necklace.
During the memorial's open floor session, an enormous amount of people, including Nwachukwu's close friends, acquaintances and faculty said they looked up to him. He was described as a student who was outgoing, did not drink alcohol or smoke, was religious, had long term goals to become a nurse and would go out of his way to help a stranger.
"I'm gonna think of him as another big brother," said one student who did not give his name. "Franklyn always used to let me stay at his place [when I had no place to go.]"
Nwachukwu worked as a Resident's Assistant in Washington dormitory in the Southwest Residential Area, which is how many of the people at the memorial first met him.
During the open floor, Shellian Smith, an Assistant Resident Director who worked with Nwachukwu, presented a large poster, which had a picture of him in the middle and messages of support to his family. Smith is having the poster sent to his family members, who could not attend Friday's service.
"It was kind of hard for me to take it down," Smith said. "There were a lot of wonderful messages."
"The last memory I had of Franklyn was food shopping," she said, as she described how Nwachukwu wanted to buy "crazy" items such as mangos to give to their residents.
Smith and others testified to the fact that Nwachukwu would often give people rides in his car.
"He took me anywhere because I didn't have a car," Smith said.
One of Nwachukwu's close friends explained how one day, without even asking, Nwachukwu phoned him from outside his dorm to say, "Let's go, I'm gonna drive you [to class]" because he was going to be late turning in a paper.
"That's the kind of person Franklyn was," he said.
"Anyone who needed anything... he'd be there for them," said Nwachukwu's first roommate at UMass, Bob, as he choked back tears.
The memorial service lasted about four hours. More than half of the time was spent having an open floor discussion. Later into the service, the UMass gospel choir performed, before an emotional video tribute was presented.
Several people began sobbing as the tribute showed pictures of Nwachukwu hanging out with friends, dancing around and riding a bicycle.
After the video, many people wrote messages and gave money for Nwachukwu's family, which is still trying to pay his funeral expenses.
A candlelight vigil and a moment of silence were held, afterwards, at the basketball court in the Southwest Horseshoe. Navy blue ribbons and messages to Franklyn were tied to the basketball court's fence.
The mood in the memorial was not all somber. Many friends joked of Nwachukwu always trying to sell people things they didn't want, how he would always try to catch people off-guard and how he was "the best liar."
Drew, a good friend of Nwachukwu, told a story of how, one day, on a trip to the store, Nwachukwu told him that he was trying out to be a UMass cheerleader.
"I didn't believe him at all, but as the trip went on, and he kept saying [he was going to try out], I believed it more and more," Drew said to the crowd who was already bursting into laughter.
"Three weeks later, I made the team, and I asked Franklyn about it... He said 'Oh, I was just lying,'" Drew told the amused audience.
When the memorial first began at 4 p.m., about 50 people showed up, but by 7 p.m., there were well over 300 people in attendance.
A man who said he didn't know Nwachukwu personally, but would often bump into him around the dorm, explained how Franklyn used to carry his laptop around the building and play music to get laughs.
"He was the coolest guy ever," he said.
According to Boston police and family members who spoke to the Daily Collegian, Nwachukwu was leaving a friend's house at 22 Lewiston St. in Hyde Park around 10 p.m. on July 15 when he was shot once in the abdomen. He was treated at the scene by emergency medical technicians, but was later pronounced dead at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Police have not made any arrests in Nwachukwu's homicide.
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Copyright Daniel O�Brien and the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. This article may not be redistributed without written permission under United States law.