A group of eighth-graders took on a monumental project as their class project: memorializing the 35 school-aged children killed by gun violence in the past year in Philadelphia.
For their year-long project, the students set out to record the memories and impressions of the surviving parents and grandparents of teenagers who were killed. In the project, pairs of students interviewed parents and grandparents.
The encounters grouped grieving adults with interviewers who were usually no older than their lost son or daughter, as the victims' personalities and dreams were detailed.
In the interviews, the same basic theme was often repeated: A desire for a beloved child or grandchild to be remembered -- and a wonder at what might have been.
A listing of participants in the four interviews featured by StoryCorps:
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