PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Nydisha Williams remembers one of the last conversations that she had with her 15-year old son, Antonio Walker Jr.
She had taken her family on a vacation to Miami. While waiting for an Uber, she sparked up a conversation asking her kids a question that would become a north star.
"I asked them, would they rather live short like a lion, or long like a lamb?" Williams said. "Would you rather work hard to pay your bills like me, and live long? Or, you can have whatever you want, but you had to like go at 25."
It was a random question, she says. And Walker asked for clarification. on something
"He’s like, 'I can have everything?' I said yes. He said, 'Okay, I’ll rather live short like a lion, so that I can give back,'" his mother recalled.
In other words, for young Walker, the important thing was not how long you live but what you do while you’re living. According to his mother, this was a good representation of the kind of kid he was.
Not long after that conversation, his life was cut short when he was killed in a senseless shooting in Southwest Philadelphia.
"Antonio was the perfect model child anyone can ask for," Williams said. "He was so focused. He was so kind, so thoughtful, so pleasant. He was a great athlete. His first year running track here, he made it to the Penn Relays. I mean, just a perfect teenage boy."
Williams says she and her family, Walker’s friends and his teachers are still grappling with the reality that he is gone.
"I never knew this kind of pain even existed," she said.
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However, Williams isn’t letting her son’s legacy end with a random act of violence. As she continues to reckon with her grief, she is also working to keep her son’s light, kindness and excellence with her -- which is why she founded a nonprofit in his name: the Antonio Walker Jr. Foundation.
"I feel like I have to give back to the things that he loved," she said.
The foundation is still in its grassroots stages, but Williams has big plans.
"I want to do cooking classes with the community. These kids need somewhere to go. They need something to do. I want to get them off their block and try to expose them," she said.
"I’m very big on exposing my children to different things, traveling to different places, eating different foods, being involved in different cultures and communities and things like that."
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Walker would have celebrated his 16th birthday in June. To commemorate the occasion, they organized a run at the same track Walker used to sprint on. It is the same place where hundreds showed up to release black balloons for him days after the tragedy.
"They connected with the school district to let us use the Bartram Village Field, which was the same field that his balloon release was, which is the same field that he actually ran track on just for regular workout, like a lot," she said.
"So we did a run for him. And we also donated $1,500 to the middle school track team for new uniforms."
She says dealing with the loss of her son is paralyzing some days. But she says that last prophetic conversation in Miami is what replays in her head and empowers her on some of the hardest days.
"And if I could just take that mothering that I gave to him .... I’m not taking credit for his brightness. But I want to be able to help other children be exposed with that,” she said.
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Listen to the full interview with Nydisha Williams and Dorothy Johnson-Speight, founder of Mothers in Charge on KYW’s "Flashpoint." It airs Saturday at 9:30 p.m. and Sunday at 8:30 a.m.