Buttermilk & Molasses

Remembering the Harveys: SLANTblog HoF Interview

Over at SLANTblog, Terry has a brief post and video link to an interview he did in 1990 with Brian Harvey and Johnny Hott during their House of Freaks days.

At the time, Bryan and Johnny were kind enough to come on a low-budget local cable television program that I produced and hosted, to sit for questions. Naturally, we worked nothing out in advance. As always, we took phone calls from viewers ... it was all live.

This clip is part of a half-hour segment of the interview on what was known as Mondo City.

Remembering the Harveys: A Crack in the Sidewalk

It has been more than two years since the senseless murders of Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey in their South Richmond home. Not long after the New Year's Day slayings in 2006, filmmaker Kris Kristensen produced a documentary commemorating the impact of Bryan Harvey's music. A synopsis of Kristensen's documentary, "Crack in the Sidewalk," reads:

Artists can impact strangers so deeply that they feel they've lost a personal friend when they die. On New Year's Day, little-know musician, Bryan Harvey made national news. The frontman of the 80's rock-duo House Of Freaks was brutally murdered along with his family in their home.  To most of the world this was simply a sensational headline, but for those who treasured Harvey's music, a part of themselves was extinguished.

Kristensen lives in Seattle, where he operates Scotopia Pictures. He wrote me a few months after the murders in reference to his documentary:

The documentary is a short, which was commissioned by the Seattle International Film Festival, and we had a very small window in which to complete the project.

We finished our rough cut on Friday, and tie up all the loose ends this week.  I'm very proud of the film, and think it's a very moving reflection of Bryan and what he meant to many who didn't know him, but were touched by him.

"A Crack in the Sidewalk" is now available for viewing in its entirety at the Internet Movie Database.

The Harvey Family: TD Reports on Woodland Heights Neighborhood

The Times-Dispatch ran an article this morning remembering Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey two years after the family was murdered in their Richmond home on New Year's Day, and looking at how their Woodland Heights neighborhood has moved on from the tragic events of 2006.

The Harvey Family: Remember Them Well

Two years ago today, the whole of Richmond wept. Take a moment today to remember Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey.

Best of 2007: Letting Grief Linger, and Fade

Grief should linger like gentle mist. It should have a light, but noticeable presence. It should lessen over time.

That's from an early January of 2007 post that pointed readers of this site to a transparent and caring story by Scott Bass in Style Weekly that revisited the emotional, spiritual and community spirit that erupted from a city split wide open with fear and grief, and then just grief, a year earlier as details emerged about the brutal deaths of two South Richmond families. It was the loss of the Harvey family -- Bryan and Kathryn, and their young daughters, Stella and Ruby -- that touched some of the deeper chords in the collective subconscious of the broader community, and that cut deeply into the hearts of the broad, eclectic community with personal connections to the Harveys.

Grief has lingered, and it has diminished. Those closest still hurt, and those at the farthest periphery have released the memories of the first few weeks of 2006. Those of us in between discover reminders as we move through our own lives, and pause to reflect on the nature of loss, and of hope.

Just before Christmas, my wife and my mother and I were visiting my grandmother's grave in Hollywood Cemetery. We drove by the Harvey family plot, which fittingly overlooks Oregon Hill and the William Byrd Community Center. Nikole and I stood at the graveside quietly for a moment, thinking of our own daughter due to arrive into our lives in May. As we drove off, we noticed the Lennon/McCarthy quote on the back of the family's memorial stone -- "And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make."

(Painting by Richmond artist Laura Loe.)

Remembering the Harvey Family: Running Ruby's Run

The title of this post is a bit misleading. We didn't run at the second annual Ruby's Run event. We did, however, join sixty or seventy kids and their parents at the Carillon to raise money for scholarships and to remember the Harvey Family. In the process, we bumped into lots of friends and enjoyed a spectacular afternoon.

Remembering the Harvey Family: Sunday's Big Run

I posted about Ruby's Run last week, and tonight I got an email that simply made my week. Maybe my year. It was one of those rare moments when I felt like this website has a purpose larger than I ever anticipated.

Remembering the Harvey Family: Ruby's Run

It's hard to believe that it has almost been two years since I woke to news that Bryan and Kathryn Harvey, along with their two young daughters Stella and Ruby, has been killed in their Richmond home. Out of that loss, and all of the grief that followed, there have been so many new connections and so much positive emotional investment emerge from the Richmod community.

One of the most inspirational examples of that has been Ruby's Run, an event that is more about community and children than it is about the fundraising aspect. Nikole and I went to the first Ruby's Run last November, and were struck mostly by the energy -- hundreds of people gathered to celebrate life, champion community, and remember a family that exemplified creativity for many in Richmond.

I got an email from Sunny Matheson, the race organizer and friend of the Harveys, that describes Ruby's Run prefectly:

Unlike other "runs" in the metro area, it is not a competition, as you saw yourself last Nov. It is an event for all kids - an afternoon of activity, fun, silliness and kids being kids. Some of the children have engaged in the pledge-collecting, fundraising aspect, and that's terrific. Community service can't begin too young, and understand that working together in a community can accomplish a lot is an important lesson for a child to learn. But we don't care if a particular child doesn't raise a dime - if they come out, have fun, and help us all remember and honor a sweet little life, then we have indeed reached our goal.

It is the fervent hope of those of us who put together this event, that the rising generation of Richmond kids associate Ruby's name not with the last two hours of her life, but with how she lived, and how much she was loved every day of her life.

The second annual Ruby's Run children's race will be held on Sunday, November 18, on the Carillon grounds by Dogwood Dell. The race is open to all children ages 4 to 14, and pledges and donations will go to a scholarship fund created in Ruby's memory at her preschool, the Second Presbyterian Child Care Center.

More than 150 children participated in last year's race, which raised $6000 and sponsored two children for six months at the daycare. Races start at 2:00 pm and details -- on the race and accompanying events -- can be found at the Ruby Harvey Memorial Children's Run website. If you are interested in volunteering, click here.

WDCE REMEMBERS THE HARVEYS

Tomorrow's Times-Dispatch reports that WDCE will broadcast a musical tribute to Bryan Harvey and his family this Friday night from 9:00 p.m. until midnight. WDCE is the student-run radio station at the University of Richmond, and broadcasts at 90.1 FM:

To honor the memory of Bryan Harvey and his family, WDCE (90.1 FM), the University of Richmond radio station, will offer a Harvey musical retrospective tomorrow.

From 9 p.m. to midnight, Harvey's music from the early days of Skateland to the nationally known House of Freaks to The Dads to his last musical collaboration in NRG Krysis will be played.

Listeners will be encouraged to make a donation to the Harvey Family Memorial Endowment to help provide enrichment for children and families through the arts.

Harvey, his wife, Kathryn, and their daughters, Ruby and Stella, were murdered in their South Side home on New Year's Day 2006.

This is the second year that WDCE is paying tribute to Harvey's musical contributions. The special will also be streamed on the station's Web site.

ONE YEAR LATER: JEN LEMEN REMEMBERS THE HARVEYS

I've written before how much I love the poetry that resonates deeply within Jen Lemen's weblog. When I get tired of the news of the day, I find myself wandering to her site (among others) for calm sensibility, and consistently beautiful reflections. I can count on Jen Lemen to break my heart -- in very good ways -- with her observations about her children, her sister, her art, her world.

That world of hers overlaps mine in one of the saddest possible ways -- our peripheral and tangible connections to the Harvey family, who were murdered last New Year's Day in Richmond. She recently wrote about Richmond, and its loss:

I learned the news through my sister Patience who does kindness work with the nurse midwife who delivered Kathryn’s babies in a local hospital. Nancy was in over her head trying to calm the women about to deliver. In the birth world, the sanctity of your house is everything, especially for mothers planning to deliver at home. Patience was having trouble sleeping at night along with so many other young mothers in Richmond. The fact that something so atrocious could happen anywhere, let alone to people as caring and creative as the Harveys, was hard to fathom. “It’s not that they were some symbol of the perfect family or anything like that,” my sister says. “They were just the kind of people who were living their best lives–their dreams. And they knew how to create community. People loved them for knowing how to do that. Knowing how to make that kind of loving, joyful space.”

My sister and I talked on the phone constantly that week. I wanted to know how the women in the neighborhood were faring. Every few days Patience would pack up baby Lucy in the car and take someone a meal or leave flowers on someone’s doorstep ...

... That day I sat on my porch and did the only thing I know how to do when there seems like all hope is gone. I lit one of my little candles and wrote out blessings. Only this time, I tried to imagine there was a Divine Mother watching over the whole mess. I asked for words to bring about healing. I asked for peace to fill every dark and fearful place. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the kind of love that can face up to that kind of horror. I prayed for Patience and her wide, loving heart. I thought about Gray killing those little children and tried to remember what it was like when he was a baby before he lost the warmth of his mother’s arms. I tried to not think about something like that ever happening again ...

... I’ve spent days trying to write this story, and I’m still not certain why it’s so important to me that I do it. All I know is that everytime I work on it, my tears are right there on the surface of things. In this moment, after hours of pouring through articles and news reports, I’m overcome by how fragile we are as human beings and how completely in need we are of love and careful care. I close my eyes and try to imagine each person in this story as a baby in my arms. Bryan. Kathryn. Ruby. Stella. Ray. Ricky. Mark. I try to hold this sadness and all the joy of each tender life, even though it’s impossible in so many ways.

I go over these words over and over again, spoken by Bryan Harvey while he was still on this earth:

“I don’t really believe in God. However, I think I’m a pretty spiritual person. I have a lot of faith in humans. I believe we’re capable of incredibly beautiful things (as well as incredibly evil).”

May incredible beauty be our hallmark. May peace, strange and unexpected, come to all who suffer this loss, like an unexpected rainfall. And may I meet every human eye with kindness in my own, remembering where we each began.

Thanks, Jen. You rock.