In memory of Billy Lucas.
(July 18, 1995 – September 9, 2010)
A 15-year-old Indiana teen took his own life in what is thought to be another suicide at least partially connected to school bullying, a result of the teen’s perceived sexual orientation. Lucas reportedly never self-identified as gay.
Billy Lucas, 15, Hangs Himself After Classmates Called Him a ‘Fag’ One Too Many Times Friends say bullying went too far after a 15-year-old high school freshman committed suicide. The apparent target of bullies, high school freshman Billy Lucas had told friends and school administrators that he was happy in high school and was starting to settle in. "Pretty outgoing young man," Greensburg High School Principal Phil Chappel said of Lucas.
"He was threatened to get beat up every day," friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. "Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him." Chappel said that no one had been punished for picking on Lucas, and that bullying had not even hit their radar. Friends of Lucas say that he had been tormented for years.
His mother found her son, hanging, in their barn. On Billy’s Facebook web memorial, he’s remembered with comments like, “Everyone made fun of him.”
R.I.P Billy Lucas
Along with spasms of lament and of plaint
I feel the fury fill my spirit faint.
Commiserate and curse, entreat and damn
The crime that still nobody would condemn.
Still no one pays for mirthful infant world
Been ravaged and extinguished in his eyes.
Your colours died against their flame of scold
The nameless blame, the subtle soul demise.
The Billy’s tree where morning rays of sun
Got lost and froze and where the throe’s begun
Enthrals my eyes and roots stuck in my heart
Do wreathe around me like the devil’s guard.
Do all those leaves and grasses of July
Whisper your name? Do winds embosom your
Warm scent ripped from the swarthy skin ally
To honey and the bees – the peaceful yore?
The choirs of the dead this life injust,
This godless life will never heed but us –
We could’ve find some kindness and explore,
Make better world a very little more.
Sudarium painted by the vernal gore,
The innocent died for uncertain tobe –
Will you bename redemption any more?
What price is for the child’s tears on your robe?
There in the Billy’s tree I leave my hope,
Red ribbon to adorn September’s cope.
May custodian flutter it no less
Than precious name will my sore heart caress.
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