Editor’s Note: The name Marvin Gates may not sound familiar at first. But on May 8, Soapbox picked up a story from the Toledo Blade that featured Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) and Gates was one of the reporter’s sources. Gates was an example of CIRV at work, a success story in the making, a young father on the path to a hopeful future.
That same month, Gates was shot dead on the street in Evanston.
We publish the story of his life, his struggles and his obstacles, to give a face to the numbers of victims of violence and to give context to a rap sheet. We publish the story of his life, his family and his journey, to illustrate the importance of collaborative efforts like CIRV.
But most of all, we publish the story of his life because it matters.
Part 1: Epilogue
In the late morning heat of May, the three men from the Thompson, Hall & Jordan Funeral Home moved precisely. Like brown-pinstripe-suited ghosts, they glided through the pair of aisles in Bethel Baptist Church, their presence only perceptible by the things they moved.
They opened the lid of a pale blue casket. They placed an elegantly arranged bouquet of white flowers on top, then pulled a bright lime-green Polo hat from inside the casket. One of the ghost-men shook off his stoicism for a brief moment and, before the eyes of the few souls who came in early and a large wooden crucifix, surged with human warmth as he carefully arranged the cap as a father straightens his son's tie, with large, steady hands.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012, was Marvin Gates' funeral. It was a day that brought neighbors of Evanston to the small church to pay respect with two things: tears and gritting teeth.
Gates' viewing filled the church to capacity. Red-eyed, teary young men wearing freshly creased shirts emblazoned with pictures of Gates stood in line, their sunglasses on and their heads tilted back, with trembling, tightly clenched fists in their pockets. It was not an option to cry here. They walked by the casket, some breathing shallowly, attempting to keep their composure. Others nodded continuously, attempting to contain the fires in their heads long enough to say goodbye.
He was getting his life back together, they said, gradually changing his environment so he wouldn't, like some before him, become a victim of it, become one of those statistics. The kind rattled off and written off: All but one of the 66 homicides in 2011 in the city of Cincinnati were blacks, according to a
Cincinnati Enquirer analysis. Twenty-one homicides in Cincinnati so far this year.
But Gates, Gates was different. He was through with the fast cash from drug dealing, the freewheeling lifestyle, the people and the life on the streets. He was leaving it behind so his 2-year-old daughter, Ma'Riyah, wouldn't grow up to think her father was a bad person.
Now, it's forever past tense. On Monday, May 14, Marvin Gates the comedian, the smooth-talker, the friend, brother and father was reported shot and killed, his existence summed up in a three-paragraph news brief accompanied by a 2007 mugshot posted by
Enquirer.
Between those scant 10 lines is a tragic journey of a young man whose dream of success came to a breathtakingly sudden end. A young man overtaken by the shadows of and cryptic messages that chased him to the ends of the world.
Part 2: “He's Gone”
Gates' mother, Althea Myles, had been feeling something was off for months. Her son had told her someone was coming to get him. “God's will be done,” she remembered he said.
Myles, a strong woman with a voice that easily travels — if it needs to — wore fashionable glasses and sat on a plush sofa, holding a laminated copy of a
Toledo Blade story attached to a large photo of Gates. The article was about the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence, about men turning their lives around. The feature, about Gates' uncle Pastor Peterson Mingo, detailed how men, despite criminal backgrounds, are working together and showing — not telling, explaining or guaranteeing — society that people can change. Gates, who worked with Mingo, had a large photo, looking serious, his gloved fingertips lying softly in some dirt during a landscaping job.
As Myles spoke, she stroked the photo gently, her fingertips never able to touch the ink of Gates' photo.
Gates had called her the morning he was shot. He told her he was gutting a fish and said, although he couldn't get her anything for Mother's Day, he would cook dinner for the family.
And then he thanked her. Over and over again. She didn't know why, but, in hindsight, thinks he did.
He called his uncle and work overseer, the Rev. Peterson Mingo, to tell him he couldn't make it into work that day. He was dealing with some problems with Ma'Riyah's mother and needed to get to a place where he could be alone. But because Gates was on probation for attempted possession of a firearm, the move would require careful navigation through legal red tape and amending some documents — something Gates assured Mingo he would do to prove he wasn't missing work for nothing.
Gates worked with Mingo and a group of young men landscaping throughout the area. In the summers, they would cut grass, and in the winters, they would clear snow. It was a way to keep them in line and off the street, but still allow them to make some money, Mingo said.
Mingo told Gates he would swing by to pick him up in Evanston — where both Gates said he was planning to move and Myles lived — on his way back from working in Kentucky. Gates agreed and told his uncle he would call him when he got there. That afternoon, when Gates called to tell his uncle he had arrived, Mingo headed north.
But then the phone rang again. The voice on the other side told Mingo that Gates had been shot. And killed.
In Evanston, Myles also answered a phone call. It was the mother of Gates' daughter with the same news: Gates had been shot. Myles, however, had heard unexplained calls eerily similar to this twice before and didn't believe it. She hung up the phone.
As it did for Mingo, Myles' phone rang again. It was Ma'Riyah's mother. “You might not believe me, but I'm looking at his eyes roll into the back of his head,” she said. As the conversation ended, Myles heard her doorbell. On the other side was a man. “You may not know me, but your son was gunned down up the street.”
As Mingo made his way to Cincinnati, Myles called her daughter, who was sitting outside on her lunch break at University Hospital. Myles' daughter had also received the call.
In Evanston, that's how news spread, door to door and through phone calls.
Myles explained the little facts she could gather, but was interrupted when she mentioned Gates was not transported by an ambulance but a car — ambulances notoriously take too long to get to Evanston, and Gates' injuries were too serious to wait.
“A white car?” her daughter asked. “One's pulling up now.” Myles didn't know. Her daughter asked if there was a female driver, but Myles didn't know that either.
“They're getting out a stretcher. I'll call you back.”
Myles waited for what felt like too long, though she doesn't know how many minutes passed, and called her daughter back, anxious.
The line connected and she could hear screaming. It was her daughter. The voice of whoever picked up the phone — she isn't sure who — spoke.
“It's him,” the voice said. “He's gone.” Myles' sister picked her up and they went to the hospital.
Mingo arrived at the hospital and heard it in person. He was attempting to see his nephew, but was blocked by a hospital worker. He explained he was family, but was still not allowed to see Gates.
“He didn't make it,” the worker told him. “One of them hit his heart.”
Mingo gathered family and friends at the hospital into a room and broke the news: Marvin Odell Gates succumbed to his wounds May 14, 2012, after being shot multiple times on the street in his native neighborhood of Evanston.
Although the police never contacted Myles about the shooting that day — she was even barred from seeing her son's body until a day before the funeral — they eventually told her Gates had enemies. Cincinnati Police are investigating a lead on a subject and believe they have found the weapon, Myles said. Cincinnati police told her they had a lead on a suspect and a possible weapon, but there is nothing concrete.
Aside from the press release the day of the shooting, the official statement from the police is curt: The investigation is ongoing.
But the question remains: Why would someone so violently end Marvin Gates' life?
What is known is that the shooter is not from Evanston. In Evanston, everyone knew Gates was not supposed to be a man lost to gunshots.
“The entire neighborhood is messed up over this,” Mingo said.
He was leaving that life behind to raise Ma'Riyah. But news that Gates was out of the game might have spread too slowly. From 2005-11, Gates had appeared in court at least 20 times for charges ranging from a faulty bicycle signaling device to the firearm charge. He was acquitted of most charges or the cases themselves were dismissed, but the records remain.
It wasn't a surprise, though. Both Mingo and Myles said they knew there were things he didn't tell them, but truly believed it was all behind him by the time of his death.
Gates had confided in Myles, saying that he sold drugs and robbed people for money. His confession culminated with a mysterious conversation during a hospital visit in December 2011, after Myles had suffered a heart attack.
“You were right,” Gates had told her. “You never really know who your friends are.”
Mingo also knows about that mysterious, underground life: There is always someone out there who never forgets.
“You truly try to put things behind you,” he said. “But some people always keep it in front of them.”
Part 3: A Real Father
Dion Crockett is an intimidating figure. He is built like a lineman and stands with his arms slightly bent at his sides. His shirt strains under the pressure of his solid frame. He wears a cleanly shaven head and enunciates his words sharply. He can't be misunderstood. Months before the shooting, Gates had taken long strides to enter the civilian work force. He was looking to get help and found it in Cincinnati Works. And Dion Crockett.
Crockett works as an employment coach at Cincinnati Works, an organization that specializes in job skill training and employment counseling, and helps young people, like Gates, clip the ties to what he calls a “generation lost.”
He sat in a chair, holding the program for Gates' funeral, his elbows on his knees, and stared off, recalling small memories that made him, like the young men with the sunglasses at the funeral, nod silently. But his nods, unlike their shallow, constant ones, were slow and deliberate.
Crockett has seen a lot of men come and go — first names counted off as he and Cincinnati Works' Phoenix Program recruiter and support coach Mitch Morris put up fingers for each memory — but said Gates was not like many of the people who come to him for help.
Gates entered Cincinnati Works' program March 16 and instantly stood out. He dressed nicely, spoke clearly, returned phone calls and told Crockett that he needed a change. And he meant it.
He had said he needed to be there for his daughter and understood that the complete reversal he was looking for in his life started from the ground up. He worked hard, engaged in all of the Works' programs earnestly and did everything he promised — he was, in short, an ideal member.
Crockett knew, like so many in Evanston did, that it was all for his daughter — his almost obsessive efforts to be the best father he could — that he tore out the old, rusted-over hooks the street lifestyle had used to reel in his body and mind nearly nine years ago.
“He would've been one of those guys that, a year later from now, would have been a success story,” Crockett said, still holding onto the funeral program. “He would be a poster boy [for Cincinnati Works]. An embodiment of Cincinnati change.”
Gates eventually got on a job with Mingo's landscaping crew in May. And he worked with his friends — things couldn't really get that much better.
When Crockett heard that Gates had been killed, he felt ill for days. In Gates, Crockett saw genuine potential. Gates talked about his daughter nonstop, telling Crockett that he needed to be working all the time to help support his daughter and be there for her.
Now, he had become a first name counted off on fingers.
Part 4: Prologue
Born Oct. 7, 1986, at Cincinnati's University Hospital, Gates was a happy child.
When he was just an infant, Myles and Gates' biological mother, Beverley, were in the hospital together, both undergoing treatment for cancer. Beverley's diagnosis, however, was bleak. The cancer was late-stage and proved fatal.
After Beverley died, Gates' father, Marvin Dillard, took custody of him. Although Dillard had the financial means, he did not have the time to raise a child. He took the still-infant Gates to his friend's house: the home of Althea Myles, who agreed to look after him. And so, from the age of three months until his death at 25, Myles was Gates’ mother. She fed him, disciplined him, divided right and wrong for him, and kept him out of trouble the best she could.
His upbringing made him distinctive from some of his peers. He spoke politely. He was highly intelligent. He was well-mannered all-around. He wasn't allowed to leave the street until he was 18. Myles admitted to perhaps sheltering Gates, but she had promised his parents she would surround their child with love.
As a boy, Gates fooled around outside with friends. He played football and basketball, and as he grew older, he wanted to be a comedian or a lawyer, or maybe a pianist because “he had long fingers.”
As he grew into a man, he began to favor vibrant, loud colors. He told Myles he was “so dark it would be impossible to see him at night unless he wore them.” He had size-14 feet that shook the house when he ran up the stairs or danced. Gates had no rhythm, according to Myles, but he loved to cook anything, although his skills in the culinary field, Myles said, were somewhat questionable. “You're going to like this, Ma,” he would say.
But at his roots, Gates was still a cut-up. He loved to talk. And he was loved for it. His personality, a boy who said, “Yes, sir” or “No, sir,” was what made his fall into a criminal life so unexpected. He bought into the gangster music videos and the draw of the streets, Myles said. He was trying to fit into a world in which he didn't belong.
Myles had expected to see Gates wake up from the disorderly conduct, the drugs and his illicit ways when he turned 35. She had told him that she didn't see him changing until he was at least that old. But when his daughter was born, she was pleasantly surprised.
“When his baby was born, it changed his life,” Myles said, looking down at the photo. “The last two years were all about his baby.”
Gates had four families that loved him: his biological parents' respective families, Myles' family and a tight-knit group of friends — boys who watched out for one another who turned into men that did the same. The men who worked with Gates on Mingo's crew. They talked about their futures together — Mingo remembers hearing them talk about buying their friends' daughter a pair of shoes — and they cursed themselves when they weren't there with Gates at the end.
Members of that fourth family call or visit Myles daily now. They supply her with precious, fresh memories that allow her create the complete vision of her boy, one who she slowly said she is sad — but not angry — she lost. In her mind, Gates was selected by God.
The twice-baptized, left-handed Gates was Myles' miracle.
“God blessed me for 26 years,” she said. “I'm not mad — I'm just going to miss him. Our time was cut short.”
Her eyes drifted again downward again, to the black and white photo. She stroked the face of Ma'Riyah's father. She stared at the static picture of the landscaper, the comedian, the son, the cousin, the high school-graduate, the motormouth, the lover, the poster boy, the success story, the wannabe “chef.”
Her gaze locked, and stayed, on the face of Marvin Gates, 25, of Evanston, who was shot on the 1500 block of St. Leger Place, Monday, May 14, 2012.
Gin Ando graduated from the University of Cincinnati journalism program in 2012. This is his first feature for Soapbox.
Photos by Thomas E. Smith.