Judy Shepard: A Phone Call That Changed Everything (Newsweek)

[FreeState]

The Shepard's story continues to touch me in very deep profound ways. Its as if they are part of me - I have never met any of them - but Matthew's death is deeply ingrained in my brain and I doubt that pain, sorrow and the resulting beauty and hope for equality will ever leave me.

:cry:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214820

It's often said that we see a white light before we die. I wonder if that is what Matt saw that last night of his consciousness, or if the last thing he saw was Aaron McKinney's hateful face.

A phone call woke me with a jolt at about 5 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, 1998. My husband, Dennis, and I were living in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a construction safety manager. I assumed that the call was from my 21-year-old son Matt, who was living in Laramie and studying political science and international relations at the University of Wyoming. At that time of day, it was almost always him. Unlike our other family members and friends in the States, who usually calculated the nine-hour time difference between Wyoming and Saudi Arabia before dialing, Matt always seemed to be living in the moment and wanted to share things with someone right now, regardless of what time it was anywhere else. Or maybe he thought it was just too much math to work out the difference.

Sometimes he'd telephone to talk about a new friend he'd just met at a coffee shop—Matt loved to bend a stranger's ear over a cup of coffee. Other times he'd want to get my opinion on something in the news or alert me to a breaking story. "Did you hear what just happened to Princess Diana? She's dead!" he'd blurted when I picked up the telephone a little more than a year before.

Not that I didn't understand, and appreciate, the impulse. Matt and I were incredibly close—so much so that at times it seemed like we were feeding off each other's energy. I always felt that the normal bond between mother and child was for some reason stronger between us—perhaps because we depended so much on each other for company when Matt was a colicky baby, when I was a fledgling parent and Dennis always seemed to be on the road for work.

Now that Matt was an adult and he and I were living continents and oceans away from each other, our conversations were shorter than I would have wished (at $5 a minute, they had to be) and more spread apart than they used to be. But when he did make those early-morning or late-night calls, the joy I felt from hearing his voice more than made up for any resulting loss of sleep.

But the phone call that Thursday morning wasn't from Matt. It was about him. When the man on the other end of the line announced who he was, an emergency-room doctor from Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, I went numb. I don't remember what he said, or what I did next. I'm not sure whether it was the ringing phone or my subsequent gasp that startled the still-sleeping Dennis. Whatever it was that woke him, Dennis took the phone from me and then, after a seemingly endless silence, made a noise—a sort of helpless and mournful groan—that I'd never heard before and haven't heard since. Coming as it did from my husband, a man whose reserved manner is as typically masculine and Western as his Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots, the moan confirmed my worst fears.

Matt had been attacked. He had sustained injuries to his head that were so critical, his chances for survival were nearly impossible.

[dsc]

1. I will never forget where I was when I found out about Matt

So many of us say but for the grace of God go I.

[slay]

2. Unforgivable

Generally, I am a forgiving person. But not this. NOT THIS. I vow to fight against hatred toward the GLBT community and for equal rights for all as long as it takes!

[Ms. Toad]

3. I am struck at how similar Judy Shepard's relationship

is to my own with my daughter. As I struggle to accept my own daughter's mortality as she faces a battle with a devastating and sometimes fatal disease, I know intimately the devastating helplessness she felt receiving that phone call. Your child, who is so close it is sometimes hard to separate one from the other, is randomly and unfairly hurt, and there is NOTHING you can do.

Thank you for posting the article - it gives me another perspective on that horrific crime.

[QC]

4. He should have just hidden his sexuality better!

Awful thing to say, isn't it?

Yet people say it to us right here in this very forum on a regular basis.

It still hurts to think about what was done to this young man, though it's been over a decade.

[romantico]

5. Have the two attackers

Have the two attackers acknowledged what they did? I thought they both denied it at first. Do they show remorse? Have they spoken to Matthew's Mother? Do we know anything about them other than they were found guilty and are serving time(is it life?)

[dsc]

6. In return for a life sentence, as opposed to the dp, they were supposed to never talk

but they gave a self serving interview on 20/20 a few years ago. I think Elizabeth Vargus was the interviewer. They claimed it was just a robbery and drug related.

[romantico]

7. Of Course

Of Course, it would be nice for them to feel remorse and to admit that it was a planned hate crime. I'd be curious to hear what they say but if they are going to play victim and lie than F*#! them!