Each day, for seven days, Yong Cha Jones slid quietly into a seat on the left side of the courtroom and sat by herself among the others gathered for the double murder trial of 56-year-old Rory Holland.
Jones didn’t know Holland. She didn’t know his two victims, 19-year-old Gage Greene and 21-year-old Derek Greene, who were all from Biddeford.
She’d never met Tammy Cole, the mother of the two young men, either, but Cole was the reason that Jones showed up — every day — to bear witness.
“I’d never met her, but I introduced myself to her on the first day I showed up. That’s what I did. I didn’t have to say anything or do anything. I told her to be strong and hold it together, but that’s all I said. I just showed up,” said Jones.
“I want to let her know that even though I don’t know her that her sons’ lives matter to me. It’s important to know that people care and remember your children,” she added.
Jones knows that all too well.
In 1993, her only child, 24-year-old Laurence A. Jones Jr., was gunned down during a robbery in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore.
Jones had graduated from the University of Maine the year before and was planning to get his master’s degree in psychology from Johns Hopkins University.
It would take police three years to arrest his killer. During that time, one year and nine months after her son’s death, Jones’ husband, Laurence Jones Sr., died of a heart attack at the couple’s Bangor home.
Her grief became so overwhelming that she made plans to kill herself in the middle of the Baltimore Street where her son died. She went from a size 16 to a size 6. She limped through her days numbed by tranquilizers. She was on medication to help her sleep and for nausea and depression.
On the day when she finally faced her son’s killer in a Baltimore courtroom, four years after the murder, Jones collapsed and paramedics had to be called.
But she persevered. She saw the whole trial. She heard every word. She watched the man who shot her beloved son sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.
So she knew what Tammy Cole was going through.
“The trial of the man who murdered my son was far away from my home,” she said. “I only had my sister and one friend with me. I was thankful for them, but I would have wanted others in my family and friends to have seen it and heard it and remembered my son.”
During the trial in Baltimore, Jones clutched a locket with her son’s graduation picture from the University of Maine inside.
Last week Cole sat in the front row at the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor, surrounded by three rows of family and friends, clutching a silver memorial medallion with her sons’ pictures engraved into it.
“I held onto this for dear life the whole trial, just hoping and praying that [Holland] would be found guilty,” Cole said after the trial.
Today Jones has regained her strength. She shows signs again of the confident, smart woman who survived the Korean War as a child and went on to earn her law degree in South Korea.
After a long and hard fight, she kicked the drugs she relied on for day-to-day survival for 8½ years.
She established the Laurence A. Jones Jr. scholarship fund for third- and fourth-year psychology students at the University of Maine.
“I find my strength each year when they award that scholarship and the students who have received it come forward during a ceremony and talk of what it meant for them. It saves me,” she said.
It’s her son’s legacy.
That ceremony is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 19, in front of North Stevens Hall and near a tree that was planted there in his memory.
Last week in the hallway of the courthouse where Holland’s trial was held, she grabbed my arm, reached into her purse and showed me the letter about the scholarship and remembrance ceremony.
“Maybe you’ll come?” she asked.
And I will, because it’s important to remember and to bear witness, just as Yong Cha Jones does.
E-mail Renee at reneeordway@gmail.com and listen to her and co-host Dan Frazell from 7 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on the radio at 103.1 The Pulse.