Blessed through Marty’ – Foundation helps family cope with loss
When Kathy Mitchell opened an account at Comerica Bank a month ago. She had hoped to raise some money to help a friend bury her 22-year-old son.
She was disappointed. The only money raised was what her family donated.
“I thought it was because it was just another young man killed in Detroit,” said Mitchell.
But Monday afternoon, she sat at a table in the clubhouse of the Landings Apartments in Westland and listened to Norman Yatooma talk to her friend, Glorius Blanch, and Teresa Stanley, the mother of Blanch’s two-year-old grandson, Martinez Jr.
Her memorial fund may not have attracted donations, but the story about it caught the attention Yatooma and his For The Kids Foundation which is providing the family with far more than burial money.
“You have a car that’s not titled; you have legal issues, we can help with that,” Yatooma told the two women. “Estate planning and how the money was trusted, we can help with that. We can help pay expenses.”
Yatooma delivered the good news 30 days after Martinez Blanch died in a shooting at Pilgrim and Ferguson on Detroit’s west side. The 22-year-old Westland resident was just a month shy of completing the Detroit Police academy when he was killed in a case of what Detroit Police said was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“He was like a big kid, he didn’t walk, he bounced around,” Blanch told Yatooma. “It’s like the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. The best thing I can do now is love Teresa and Marty.”
A trauma nurse at Sinai-Grace Hospital, Blanch also does private duty work to help pay the bills and care for her family. There was no money to pay funeral expenses, but help from others let the Blanch family lay their son to rest.
The Detroit Police provided $1,600 and the Rev. Jim Holly and Little Rock Baptist Church covered the $4,000 cemetery fees. There was also $700 collected by employees at Sinai-Grace.
She didn’t buy flowers, but there were plenty there, including sprays from Motor City Ford Trucks and the Detroit Police Department. According to Mitchell, “It took 14 people to carry out the flowers and plants.”
“I couldn’t even make my own son’s obituary, Kathy did that,” said Blanch.
She added that there is still another $1,800-$2,000 that is owed to Coles Funeral Home and no money to pay for a headstone, items Yatooma added to the foundation’s list of things to do.
Yatooma spent five years putting the foundation together in memory and in honor of his father, Manuel, who died in a carjacking in Detroit.
The foundation’s purpose is to help children who lose a parent and their families. It was launched on Father’s Day 2003. Since then, it has helped 12 families. “You shouldn’t think twice about calling us for additional financial assistance,” Yatooma told the two women. “Anything we do we ask that someday you give back to the community.”
Stanley, 20, and Martinez Sr. met in high school and had been together for more than five years. She has been around his family so long that she calls them mom and dad.
She has found that many nights she leaves the apartment with Marty because she needs to go some place else. The foundation has taken care of the rent through the end of the year for Stanley’s apartment so she “can concentrate on taking care of other things.”
It was Marty Sr. who wanted her to go to college, so she has been working two jobs and attending Wayne State University, where she is studying business administration.
“It’s really scary not knowing the future,” she said. “Marty (Sr.) always determined the future and I knew I would be taken care of. When you first called, I said ‘thank you, Marty,’ in my head because I knew through him I was blessed to have your foundation help me. “You’ve helped so much.” While the foundation is helping Stanley and young Marty, it also is helping the Blanches.
On Monday, there were groceries for both families with orders to call when they needed more, money to help with expenses and a commitment to make repairs at Blanch’s home.
She told Yatooma she would like to move from Detroit, but can’t, unlike the woman, who had summoned to her home the gunman who killed Marty Sr. and his best
friend, Shannon Jones. “I should be more appreciative, but I’m overwhelmed, dealing with the loss of Marty, working and taking care of others, and Teresa is trying to be stronger than me,” she said. “You’re a high-powered attorney and you haven’t forgotten how you felt.”
“This is the best thing I do all day,” Yatooma
replied. “Maybe a year from now, 10 years from now, you’ll have a wonderful story to tell.”
smason@oe.homecomm.net / (734)953.2112
