Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son by Leroy Aarons

From the Publisher

Bobby Griffith was an all-American boy ...and he was gay. Faced with an irresolvable conflict-for both his family and his religion taught him that being gay was "wrong"-Bobby chose to take his own life.

Prayers for Bobby, nominated for a 1996 Lambda Literary Award, is the story of the emotional journey that led Bobby to this tragic conclusion. But it is also the story of Bobby's mother, a fearful churchgoer who first prayed that her son would be "healed," then anguished over his suicide, and ultimately transformed herself into a national crusader for gay and lesbian youth.

As told through Bobby's poignant journal entries and his mother's reminiscences, Prayers for Bobby is at once a moving personal story, a true profile in courage, and a call to arms to parents everywhere.

Library Journal

Mary Griffith prayed that her gay son Bobby would be "healed." After his suicide, her anguish led her on a journey from faithful churchgoer to national crusader for gay and lesbian youth. (LJ 5/15/95)

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One

The Plunge

August 27, 1983
Portland, Oregon

Bobby Griffith left the Family Zoo lounge about midnight and walked northwest through downtown Portland, past office buildings and lofts that still bore the ornate imprint of another century. It was a warm but cloudy western night in late August 1983. Blond, green eyed, six feet tall, and muscular, he wore a light plaid shirt and green fatigue pants, and walked with a deliberate, loping gait. To a passerby he would have looked like any other young man on his way home after a night out.

He headed up a hill and onto a plateau through which sliced Interstate 405, the main north-south artery. From this vantage point one could see most of the city, aligned on either side of the Willamette River. Lights flickered in the foreground, yielding to patches of darkened residential neighborhoods where most of Portland slept. The steady roar of freeway traffic played counterpoint to the still night.

Bobby approached the Everett Street overpass. Once on the bridge he could see the 405 traffic rush by, then disappear beneath the concrete span. The fragrance of diesel and petroleum hung in the air.

What was he thinking? Perhaps he voiced the silent wish, often repeated in his Journals, to lift off, set sail to the heavens, forever drifting. Perhaps the familiar dark depression engulfed him, strangling hope.

"My life is over as far as I'm concerned," he wrote in his diary exactly one month before. "I hate living on this earth.... I think God must get a certain amount of self-satisfaction watching people deal with theobstacles he throws in their path.... I hate God for this and for my shitty existence."

He must have seen the large tractor trailer approaching from under the Couch Street overpass and timed the jump. Bobby executed a sudden and effortless back flip and disappeared over the railing. The driver tried to swerve, but there was no time.

Two witnesses later reported they at first thought it was a prank. They rushed to the railing expecting to see Bobby dangling. No. He had descended twenty-five feet directly into the path of the trailer, which tossed his body fourteen feet under the overpass.

The impact had ripped away most of his clothes and strewn them on the highway. Beneath his body paramedics found a two-dollar bill and seventy-seven cents in change.

The medical examiner said later that Robert Warren Griffith, age twenty years and two months, had died instantly of massive internal injuries.