For every grieving mother in Charlotte, this is who picks up the phone
Across the console of an Oldsmobile Cutlass, a teenage Lisa Crawford watched from the passenger seat as her father John Crawford rolled down his window to talk to a young man.
Her dad listened quietly. The young man was a senior in college, but couldn’t afford to return for his final semester — short a few hundred dollars.
“Oh, we can’t have that,” Crawford recalls her father said.
He made some calls, raised the money and donated himself. Years ago, that moment was the start of the Greater Steps Scholars program, formerly known as Charlotte Housing Authority Scholarship Fund.
It was one moment of a lifetime of community service by John Crawford — and it planted a seed for his daughter Lisa, who now leads one of Charlotte’s most well-known grief support groups during some of the city’s deadliest years.
“I realized then that if you can help, even a small amount, it can be life changing,” she said. “I was young, but it stuck with me. It made me want to be part of something great like this.
“I watched him and knew that I needed to give back, too — that there was something I needed to be doing in the community.”
Crawford is director of Mothers of Murdered Offspring, which supports loved ones of those who are killed or murdered in Charlotte. When MOM-O’s original founder Judy Williams died from lung cancer in 2020, Charlotte was dealing with one of the worst murder rates seen since the group’s founding in 1993.
Next year will be the organization’s 30th anniversary, and Crawford is working on creating what she calls “MOM-O 2.0.”
Part of the plan includes a focus on violence prevention among children and teens, which is needed now more than ever, many say. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police say they’re continuing to focus on juvenile violence. This school year, there has been a record number of guns found in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
This reimagined version of the organization includes using technology for record-keeping (Williams kept most information in stacks of notebooks in her office, Crawford said), more support for men, a youth violence prevention program, expanding the staff and advocating for policy change.
“She was the connection. She was the bridge,” Crawford said of Williams in a recent interview.
“To lose that has just been a huge void — for me and for this organization. We’re trying to pick up the pieces and continue her legacy.”
‘Give them a place to belong’
Crawford’s involvement with MOM-O began with her friendship with Williams’ son David Howard.
While she worked for the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, they walked past each other every day in the halls and took the elevator together, and after she left the chamber to become an event planner, working once with Howard at an NAACP event solidified their friendship. Then she started working with MOM-O.
The organization was founded in 1993 when Williams’ goddaughter Shawna Hawk was murdered, and there was no one to help Hawk’s mother Dee Sumpter cope with the loss. The group has been hosting candlelight vigils and providing support and counseling services to families in need for almost three decades.
“She has really become like my big sister,” Howard said. “What started as a temporary helping has turned into a major part of her life story.”
Crawford was asked to help manage administrative tasks and grants for the organization, and her responsibilities grew over the years.
“That’s when I really got to know Ms. Judy,” Crawford said.
The group’s relationship with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has grown in the nearly three decades it’s existed, and now they’re called immediately by the police to help families through loss.
“MOM-O first and foremost is a support group,” Crawford said. “It is a place for family members who have experienced the most devastating, the most traumatic thing that I think could ever happen to a family, and give them a place to belong.”
She learned from Williams, Crawford said, how to offer and foster those connections with grieving family members. She remembers years back being with Williams one afternoon when her phone rang.
Crawford could hear a woman sobbing and screaming through the tinny speakers, with Williams on the other end.
“It sounded almost like someone she knew but didn’t really know,” Crawford said. “But she still stopped everything she was doing to focus on this lady on the phone.”
After a few minutes, the door to Williams’ apartment opened: The woman Williams was talking to walked in, still crying and holding the phone to her ear. Crawford then realized Williams had been talking her through her son’s death, from the moment it happened, to the second she arrived.
Inside, Williams and the woman held each other in a long embrace. And then they both cried.
“I had always been a little away from the families. I was really just on the business side, but in that moment, I had a real connection,” Crawford said, describing it as an “out-of-body experience.”
“I was always connected and engaged, but it was almost like I was watching a private moment,” Crawford said. “I don’t think until that moment the work we were doing had really struck my inner soul.”
Through the years, their bond grew and Williams became “my other mother,” Crawford says.
Carrying on a legacy
To achieve all of the dreams she has for the organization, Crawford says she needs more people involved.
Leadership duties have since been split among four people, including Crawford. Now, her eyes are turned to raising more funds for the organization to better serve Charlotte.
Crawford wants to make sure all families are “loved on” in the same way they always have been, and that there’s no lapse in quality of support despite the change of leadership.
“Just countless times when I’ve answered the phone, there’s someone else on the other line, and they are in such despair. They pour their hearts out about how devastated, how hopeless they are,” Crawford said. “So many times when they get off the phone later, they say, ‘Ms. Lisa, I love you, I’m so thankful.’ They feel better, they feel valued, they understand they’re not alone.
“A lot of times as hard as it is, I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful that God gave me the shoulders to handle it. This is such a blessing.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 12:16 PM.
