Pin Wizard
<font color=deeppink>I now have a new favorite at
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2002
- Messages
- 17,262
This is soooooooooo sad! My friend's daughter went to this sophomore's funeral!!
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Posted on Sun, Nov. 09, 2003
BOCA RATON SLAYING
Hopes ... a prank ... now grief
Parents and friends of the 16-year-old shot dead over a prank talk about the boy they knew, about friendships that extended from schoolmates to a musical superstar, and about dreams never to come true.
BY PAUL LOMARTIRE
Palm Beach Post
It took two deputies to hold back a mother who was desperate to touch her dying son.
That's how strong and powerful a frantic mother can be.
Eight days after her boy Mark, died, Luciana Drewes wears a long-sleeved black top to cover the black-and-blue marks on her arms.
The bruises are reminders of the wee hours of Oct. 25, after Mark and a friend played a prank, and a neighbor shot and killed him in their suburban Boca Raton neighborhood.
She has a haunted look in her eyes -- dark, cloudy, full of pain. Luciana and her husband, Greg, are in a Deerfield Beach hotel room that faces the ocean. They weren't ready to talk freely about Mark until now.
Greg is wearing Mark's favorite baseball cap. Luciana -- elegant, thin, high cheekbones and those weary eyes -- sneaks out to the balcony for a cigarette as a storm builds over the ocean.
At first, Greg says, they thought they had to get as far away from Woodbury Road and the Boca Del Mar subdivision as possible. But there is no place where they don't remember what happened.
THE PARTY
Mark Drewes' friends and their parents were having so much fun at his 16th birthday party on Oct. 24 that somebody called the cops around 11 p.m.
Don't worry, Mark joked with the deputy at the door, ``I'll keep the parents in line.''
His mom, Luciana, apologized for the noise and offered the deputy cake. Mark's birthday bash was planned to be the buzz of Pope John Paul II High School.
''This is the greatest night of my life,'' Mark told his best friend, A.J. Lepore.
In this perfect suburban Boca Raton neighborhood, Mark's life seemed so carefree that he and his friends moved easily that night from his house to a carnival a few blocks away at St. Jude Catholic School.
It was near midnight when Mark headed out of his house with another kid, Anatoly Martynenko. ''When we get back,'' Mark told A.J., who got to the party late, ``we'll play Madden [a video game]. Be right back.''
Soon after, Luciana and A.J.'s mom, Kathy, heard a police car racing toward Woodbury Road. They expected the police at their door again. But no one ever came.
A.J. saw an ambulance and went outside to see what was going on. As he walked to the neighboring subdivision where the lights of an ambulance flashed, he called Mark's cellphone.
No answer.
A.J. went back to Mark's house and said he couldn't find Mark. Luciana froze.
''It was like a mother's instinct,'' says Kathy. 'Right that second she said, `Where's Mark?' and we went flying out the door.''
They found Mark lying face down, dying, on a perfect lawn. He had been shot in the back. He paid the ultimate price for a common prank -- Mark and Anatoly had been banging on neighbors' doors and running away.
After slamming the door knocker at Jay Levin's house, Mark ran, but not far. Levin, 40, answered the door with a pistol and fired one shot.
Luciana was so frantic when she got to her son, it took two deputies to hold her back so paramedics could try a miracle.
Luciana recognized one of the deputies and pleaded: ``You were just at my house eating birthday cake!''
Mark Drewes, just 16, was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 25.
CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
To say Mark Drewes lit up the lives of his friends in Boca Raton is not enough. The reach of this teen went way beyond his neighborhood.
Most people know Clarence Clemons as the sax player in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Mark knew him as Uncle Clarence. Clemons' friendship with Mark's father, Greg, goes back 30 years to the days when they were Mark's age, hanging around at the Jersey shore with a guitar player named Springsteen.
They formed and unbreakable bond.
''You meet people,'' says Clemons, ``but he was like a soulmate. He's closer to me than my brother.''
When Clemons got the news Mark had been killed, he had just returned home to Singer Island, in northern Palm Beach County, from his tour with Springsteen. ''Greg was in shambles. I was in shock,'' Clemons says. ``Greg and Mark had just moved me into my new house. I had just talked to him before I went out on the road.''
Greg manages a smile when he talks about the old days with Clemons.
''You couldn't do better than Clarence as a running buddy,'' says Greg. He kept a sax in the trunk of his car and when they found women they liked, Clemons would play just enough to get the girls.
Those ties that bind extended to the E Street Band. Springsteen's song, Wreck on the Highway, is about Greg's sister, Debi, who was nearly killed in a car wreck by a drunken driver.
No matter where they lived or worked, they stayed close through weddings and worries about their sons, born two years apart.
''Greg would talk to me about Mark,'' says Clemons, ``worried because he wasn't aggressive enough. He'd never fight back to get out of a situation. I told Greg that's a good thing.We all learned a lot from Mark.''
''Mark would have become a priest or something, I know he would have,'' says Clemons. ``The world lost something really great. This guy [Jay Levin] took something out of the world that would have done something really great.''
Greg was overseeing the overhaul of Aquila, a corporate-owned, 165-foot yacht at a Marseille, France, shipyard when he got the call that Mark was dead.
He immediately called Clemons, who with his manager, Darlene DeLano, moved Greg and Luciana to a hotel and hired a lawyer, Bob Montgomery, for them.
A TRIBUTE
Luciana and Greg Drewes set up a miniature shrine to Mark in their hotel room: The memorial card from his funeral service and a cross.
They have hundreds of cards, letters, drawings, notes in bundles.
When the cards started pouring in, Greg says, ``We realized we can't leave and live with strangers.''
What they have here is people who loved their son.
''You never heard him say a bad word about anyone,'' says Greg.
When Mark was small, Greg got him started playing baseball. ''I couldn't understand anything about it,'' says Luciana, who grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 'I said, `Play soccer, that I know.' ''
Soccer suited him well. Mark had just decided to try out for his high school.
From the time he was little, says Greg, Mark wanted to be a businessman.
'He'd say, `Dad, I want a Ferrari, a suit and a briefcase.' ''
When Mark hit 13, he went from a little kid to a 6-footer.
He built gas-powered remote cars and counted the days until he was 16 to start driving his dad's Explorer.
SHOCKING MOMENT
Emily Danciu-Grosso, 15, was at The Nail Depot when she heard the news. ``Someone said a sophomore at Pope died. It didn't hit me ... ''
Jessica Engelke, 15 , was at the St. Jude's carnival when her cellphone rang. ``I just started crying.''
No one could connect the sweet kid they knew with the brutal facts: Gun. Mark. Shot. Dead.
''You never expected anything like that to happen to Mark,'' says Taylor Miller.
Jill Ghory says, ``There wasn't a day that Mark didn't have a smile on his face.''
All their stories came out two Sundays ago after Mass at St. Jude Catholic Church, when the LifeTeens youth group met for the first time without Mark.
A.J. Lepore attended.
He knows things no one else knows about Mark. He was there the night of Mark's first kiss. He knows who Mark wanted to take to homecoming. He knows all of Mark's favorite songs and all of Mark's plans.
''We were growing up together,'' A.J. said in his eulogy at Mark's funeral service. ``Mark and I won't ever be able to do these things together now. ... I love you, Mark, and I always will.''
For Luciana and Greg Drewes, whose boy will never become a man, comfort comes from the devotion of his friends.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/7211250.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
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Posted on Sun, Nov. 09, 2003
BOCA RATON SLAYING
Hopes ... a prank ... now grief
Parents and friends of the 16-year-old shot dead over a prank talk about the boy they knew, about friendships that extended from schoolmates to a musical superstar, and about dreams never to come true.
BY PAUL LOMARTIRE
Palm Beach Post
It took two deputies to hold back a mother who was desperate to touch her dying son.
That's how strong and powerful a frantic mother can be.
Eight days after her boy Mark, died, Luciana Drewes wears a long-sleeved black top to cover the black-and-blue marks on her arms.
The bruises are reminders of the wee hours of Oct. 25, after Mark and a friend played a prank, and a neighbor shot and killed him in their suburban Boca Raton neighborhood.
She has a haunted look in her eyes -- dark, cloudy, full of pain. Luciana and her husband, Greg, are in a Deerfield Beach hotel room that faces the ocean. They weren't ready to talk freely about Mark until now.
Greg is wearing Mark's favorite baseball cap. Luciana -- elegant, thin, high cheekbones and those weary eyes -- sneaks out to the balcony for a cigarette as a storm builds over the ocean.
At first, Greg says, they thought they had to get as far away from Woodbury Road and the Boca Del Mar subdivision as possible. But there is no place where they don't remember what happened.
THE PARTY
Mark Drewes' friends and their parents were having so much fun at his 16th birthday party on Oct. 24 that somebody called the cops around 11 p.m.
Don't worry, Mark joked with the deputy at the door, ``I'll keep the parents in line.''
His mom, Luciana, apologized for the noise and offered the deputy cake. Mark's birthday bash was planned to be the buzz of Pope John Paul II High School.
''This is the greatest night of my life,'' Mark told his best friend, A.J. Lepore.
In this perfect suburban Boca Raton neighborhood, Mark's life seemed so carefree that he and his friends moved easily that night from his house to a carnival a few blocks away at St. Jude Catholic School.
It was near midnight when Mark headed out of his house with another kid, Anatoly Martynenko. ''When we get back,'' Mark told A.J., who got to the party late, ``we'll play Madden [a video game]. Be right back.''
Soon after, Luciana and A.J.'s mom, Kathy, heard a police car racing toward Woodbury Road. They expected the police at their door again. But no one ever came.
A.J. saw an ambulance and went outside to see what was going on. As he walked to the neighboring subdivision where the lights of an ambulance flashed, he called Mark's cellphone.
No answer.
A.J. went back to Mark's house and said he couldn't find Mark. Luciana froze.
''It was like a mother's instinct,'' says Kathy. 'Right that second she said, `Where's Mark?' and we went flying out the door.''
They found Mark lying face down, dying, on a perfect lawn. He had been shot in the back. He paid the ultimate price for a common prank -- Mark and Anatoly had been banging on neighbors' doors and running away.
After slamming the door knocker at Jay Levin's house, Mark ran, but not far. Levin, 40, answered the door with a pistol and fired one shot.
Luciana was so frantic when she got to her son, it took two deputies to hold her back so paramedics could try a miracle.
Luciana recognized one of the deputies and pleaded: ``You were just at my house eating birthday cake!''
Mark Drewes, just 16, was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 25.
CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
To say Mark Drewes lit up the lives of his friends in Boca Raton is not enough. The reach of this teen went way beyond his neighborhood.
Most people know Clarence Clemons as the sax player in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Mark knew him as Uncle Clarence. Clemons' friendship with Mark's father, Greg, goes back 30 years to the days when they were Mark's age, hanging around at the Jersey shore with a guitar player named Springsteen.
They formed and unbreakable bond.
''You meet people,'' says Clemons, ``but he was like a soulmate. He's closer to me than my brother.''
When Clemons got the news Mark had been killed, he had just returned home to Singer Island, in northern Palm Beach County, from his tour with Springsteen. ''Greg was in shambles. I was in shock,'' Clemons says. ``Greg and Mark had just moved me into my new house. I had just talked to him before I went out on the road.''
Greg manages a smile when he talks about the old days with Clemons.
''You couldn't do better than Clarence as a running buddy,'' says Greg. He kept a sax in the trunk of his car and when they found women they liked, Clemons would play just enough to get the girls.
Those ties that bind extended to the E Street Band. Springsteen's song, Wreck on the Highway, is about Greg's sister, Debi, who was nearly killed in a car wreck by a drunken driver.
No matter where they lived or worked, they stayed close through weddings and worries about their sons, born two years apart.
''Greg would talk to me about Mark,'' says Clemons, ``worried because he wasn't aggressive enough. He'd never fight back to get out of a situation. I told Greg that's a good thing.We all learned a lot from Mark.''
''Mark would have become a priest or something, I know he would have,'' says Clemons. ``The world lost something really great. This guy [Jay Levin] took something out of the world that would have done something really great.''
Greg was overseeing the overhaul of Aquila, a corporate-owned, 165-foot yacht at a Marseille, France, shipyard when he got the call that Mark was dead.
He immediately called Clemons, who with his manager, Darlene DeLano, moved Greg and Luciana to a hotel and hired a lawyer, Bob Montgomery, for them.
A TRIBUTE
Luciana and Greg Drewes set up a miniature shrine to Mark in their hotel room: The memorial card from his funeral service and a cross.
They have hundreds of cards, letters, drawings, notes in bundles.
When the cards started pouring in, Greg says, ``We realized we can't leave and live with strangers.''
What they have here is people who loved their son.
''You never heard him say a bad word about anyone,'' says Greg.
When Mark was small, Greg got him started playing baseball. ''I couldn't understand anything about it,'' says Luciana, who grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 'I said, `Play soccer, that I know.' ''
Soccer suited him well. Mark had just decided to try out for his high school.
From the time he was little, says Greg, Mark wanted to be a businessman.
'He'd say, `Dad, I want a Ferrari, a suit and a briefcase.' ''
When Mark hit 13, he went from a little kid to a 6-footer.
He built gas-powered remote cars and counted the days until he was 16 to start driving his dad's Explorer.
SHOCKING MOMENT
Emily Danciu-Grosso, 15, was at The Nail Depot when she heard the news. ``Someone said a sophomore at Pope died. It didn't hit me ... ''
Jessica Engelke, 15 , was at the St. Jude's carnival when her cellphone rang. ``I just started crying.''
No one could connect the sweet kid they knew with the brutal facts: Gun. Mark. Shot. Dead.
''You never expected anything like that to happen to Mark,'' says Taylor Miller.
Jill Ghory says, ``There wasn't a day that Mark didn't have a smile on his face.''
All their stories came out two Sundays ago after Mass at St. Jude Catholic Church, when the LifeTeens youth group met for the first time without Mark.
A.J. Lepore attended.
He knows things no one else knows about Mark. He was there the night of Mark's first kiss. He knows who Mark wanted to take to homecoming. He knows all of Mark's favorite songs and all of Mark's plans.
''We were growing up together,'' A.J. said in his eulogy at Mark's funeral service. ``Mark and I won't ever be able to do these things together now. ... I love you, Mark, and I always will.''
For Luciana and Greg Drewes, whose boy will never become a man, comfort comes from the devotion of his friends.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/7211250.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
