On Easter Sunday in 2009, Terrez McCleary’s 21-year-old daughter, Tamara Johnson, was shot and killed over a dispute about a car. Johnson was a nursing student at the Community College of Philadelphia. She had dreams of being a neonatal nurse, but her life was cut short just one month after she turned 21. In the days and months that followed, McCleary felt her daughter’s story had been forgotten, just another statistic in a city known for its gun violence crisis.
I met McCleary in early May when I moderated a panel for the launch of a podcast, Grid Magazine’s “The People Left Behind,” a series aimed at raising awareness about the ripple effects of gun violence. As I made my way to the stage, McCleary, a woman with long blondish-brown hair greeted me with a bright smile. She wore a shirt with an airbrushed photo of a beautiful young lady on it. I would soon learn that she was one of the panelists, and that the image on her shirt was of Tamara.
Once the panel started, McCleary was calm and poised, but when she began to talk about losing her daughter, she broke into tears. Though she’s told Tamara’s story hundreds of times, she said, “it still hurts. It’s going to always hurt. But by telling her story, I’m keeping her legacy alive.”
Since her daughter’s death, that’s been her goal. She founded the nonprofit Moms Bounded by Grief which connects mothers who’ve lost children to gun violence. In 2023, they created a community garden, a space where they can plant and heal together. It also fits in with the city’s “Clean and Green” strategy. By planting trees and growing the city’s canopy cover, Philadelphians can feel more ownership over their neighborhoods. Not only that, boosting plant life can bring down temperatures in neighborhoods with little shade — and ultimately lower rates of gun violence.
“The healing garden is my baby,” said McCleary. “That’s what I want to focus on; providing a space of beauty. Where one can come, sit, reminisce, exhale, and just soak in the greenery.”
McCleary’s journey from pain to peace was not easy. At one point her sorrow was affecting those around her, she said. She found herself living in a dark space. The experience creating the garden hasn’t been perfect, either; there have been several instances of vandalism, and someone once stole their lights. Still, McCleary said, through prayer, peer support, nature, and therapy, she managed to see the beauty in this world again. She hopes that the garden will help others find peace. Here, she’s sharing her story in her own words.
McCleary’s story has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
At the time of Tamara’s death, I was a corrections officer and, by working in the prison environment, I brought negative energy home. All of the hate, anger, bitterness, I felt, I found myself taking it out on my husband. I didn’t want to feel like that anymore. I prayed and prayed. My heart was black after losing Tamara, but I didn’t want my granddaughter, Tamara’s daughter, Ghazalah Washington, to grow up to be an angry child.
I discovered that sitting in my backyard became a place of peace for me. It felt good being able to disconnect from society and place my thoughts somewhere else.
In 2022, Moms Bonded By Grief was invited to New Hope, Connecticut, by Marlene Miller-Pratt, to visit the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence. Marlene thought that it would be a great idea for us to build one in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the space or the finances to be able to create a garden as big as they did. So we started looking to find somewhere to do a smaller yet similar version, to memorialize victims in Philly.
We started out at Bartram’s Gardens and planted the trees there. But Bartram’s Gardens pulled out because they thought people would come in and vandalize the area. The Reverend Dr. Evelyn Graves had later offered a portion of the land located at 51st and Woodland Avenue. In 2023, we broke ground and started memorializing victims from 2017 moving forward, because 2017 was the year that Moms Bonded By Grief was born.
We placed river rocks under the trees and handcrafted the rocks with the names and the age of each victim for that year. So if there were 400 homicides in 2017, we created 400 river rocks. And we placed a poem on a plaque dedicated to those lives lost. We are currently working on the names for 2023.
Nature, and just beauty within itself, is healing. When some of us come out of our homes, or come out of the front door, or go to walk the neighborhood, we’re surrounded by abandoned homes, litter on the streets, police or fire rescue sirens. It seems like there is this darkness in the community, no hope in some neighborhoods. I figured that the healing garden would be a space where you could breathe in nature in peace. We have benches out there for people to sit and just exhale and relax.
My mission is to support, uplift, and comfort other mothers and help them through this journey. Green spaces are just as important as grief therapy and peer support.
I dedicate the garden not only to my daughter, but to all the children that we have lost. I speak of my daughter every day because I want everyone to remember her name when I’m dead and gone. That garden is going to represent my child. When you walk in there and you see the brick pathway, her name is at the top of that pathway, Tamara.
The Trace’s reporting in Philadelphia is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, and Philadelphia Health Partnership. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoice-everyvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.
