Hundreds gather at Suffolk memorial to honor teen

SUFFOLK

Mike Lee showed up for football practice even when he was injured. He earned A’s but still took time to joke and play around. He’d  say hello to someone he didn’t  know.

Hundreds gathered in Lakeland High School’s auditorium Wednesday night to remember the boy they said never stopped smiling. While standing behind a podium draped in Lee’s No. 32 jersey, they used words like caring, happy and helpful to describe him.

Lee, 17, was fatally shot while in Norfolk last weekend.

Senior counselor Sheila Williams said she  met Lee at the beginning of the school year. He wanted to be in honors government, but the class was full. He dropped by her office just about every day until there was an opening.

Eventually, she asked him to be a guidance aide.

“I knew Mike faced many challenges,” Williams said. “Instead of Mike leading his life in anger and despair, he le d his life with determination and purpose.”

As the school’s  choir sang Wednesday, the audience stood  and clapped. Lee’s family danced. A couple of students put their arms around each other. One girl wiped tears from another’s eyes.

The ceremony ended with two announcements that had audience members back on their feet.

Carlos Howard, president of the 35th Street Merchants Association in Norfolk, said his organization has posted  a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of  Lee’s assailant.

Howard, a Suffolk native,  lives in Norfolk’s Park Place, where the shooting occurred.

Howard also said he was donating $1,500 to $2,500 for a college scholarship in honor of Lee. It will likely go to an athlete with high academic standards, he said.

The reality that Lee is gone is just beginning to sink in, said senior Erick Hargrove, 17.

He and the other football players wore their jerseys with a photo  of Lee pinned to their chests.

The memorial service “gives us a chance to express ourselves,” Hargrove said. To “let everybody know what his influence on us was.”

Hattie Brown Garrow, (757) 222-5562, hattie.brown@pilotonline.com