BY SUSAN DU
Homicide Watch Chicago
Looking through 15-year-old Aaron Rushing’s old class assignments, Chicago High School for the Arts teacher Nik Mabry found a clipped self-evaluation form.
Aaron divided a sheet of paper into “Accomplishments” and “Fears.” He listed completing homework and keeping a minimum 3.0 grade point average as accomplishments.
Under fears, he only wrote “nun.”
Aaron was fatally shot in a May 18 drive-by shooting in the 4700 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in the Kenwood neighborhood where he lived, authorities said. Nobody has been charged for the murder.
Aaron Rushing school work / Submitted photo
Aaron was sweet, shy and smiled a big honest smile, Mabry said. In class, he would answer questions in the most minimalist way possible, preferring to communicate through his music.
Aaron’s grandfather gave him his first guitar the Christmas of 2009 and he taught himself to play from YouTube videos, Mabry said. He learned to read music at ChiArts.
“He loved music so much,” Mabry said. “He could tell you everything he wanted to tell you in a song. He would happily play his guitar in front of an audience of people, but I can’t imagine him getting up and speaking in front of a group.”
Last Saturday was Aaron’s funeral. About 100 people attended the burial, including family and friends from his church and schools, Mabry said. Aaron’s brother recalled the time he trampled Aaron’s Lego construction, but Aaron only responded with a shrug then began to rebuild.
His pastor told of a completely unexpected – now legendary — rock and roll church hymn Rushing once performed before his Life Center Church of God in Christ congregation.
Established five years ago, ChiArts had not lost a single student to gun violence until Aaron. The murder was also the first in Mabry’s teaching career.
Mabry, who recently moved to Chicago after teaching in Kentucky, said now when she reads about teen murders she immediately prays for her students’ safety.
The morning after Aaron’s murder, Mabry encouraged ChiArts students to return to class as she resumed her regular teaching schedule. By lunchtime, Mabry found her students sitting on a hallway floor holding each other.
They took the ACT Plan test the next day.
Aaron Rushing / Photo from Facebook
“Sadly, for many of [my students] this isn’t the first tragedy they’ve experienced. Statistically, the terrible truth is eventually it will be someone from ChiArts,” Mabry said. “As much as Aaron is his individual self, he’s sadly part of a bigger and growing problem.”
Mabry said she draws strength from responsibility, but seeks her students’ support just as much as they seek support from her.
“I don’t know how or when we’re going to get through this, but I know we will,” Mabry said. “I’m so thankful that we have each other.”
After school, Mabry goes through her collection of Aaron’s assignments. She has poems and a short story he wrote about walking into a grocery store with his grandmother and getting looks from other shoppers because of his long dreadlocks.
“In their eyes, I was a crime bomb, waiting to explode. I had been profiled as a thief, as a resistor of the law, and they didn’t know my name,” Aaron wrote. “I don’t think it was personal.”