Jun. 10—TAFT — Few cars passed the gazebo along Main Street on Thursday — nothing out of the ordinary on this warm, calm pre-summer evening.
Muskogee Branch NAACP members seek to keep it that way. The Rev. Rodger Cutler and Norman Grayson spent early Thursday evening by the gazebo offering McDonald’s gift cards to Taft youngsters.
For Cutler, branch president, such small acts of kindness are one way to help Taft heal from the May 28 shootings that marred a Memorial Day weekend festival.
Sherika Bowler, 39, a former teachers’ assistant at Muskogee’s Early Childhood Center, was killed during the gunfire, during which eight others were wounded. Bowler’s funeral is set for 10 a.m. Saturday at Muskogee First Assembly.
On Thursday evening, Zakayhia Hollis Triggs, 9, got one of the gift cards. Her auntie, Angela Jackson of Boynton, brought her by. Jackson said the girl was shot in the thigh during the gunfire.
“She’s doing okay,” Jackson said. “She has trouble sleeping at night. Still, being happy, being a kid, she hasn’t lost that. She’s out of trouble. It went through the thigh. It’s not a wound that’s going to last forever.”
Siblings Shania and Javion Thompson, both 12, rode up on a four-wheeler Thursday night. They also got gift cards. Shania said she wants to get nuggets.
“They’re good,” she said.
Their mother Shana Wilson of Taft said she appreciates the NAACP “checking on us and supporting us.”
“It lets us know someone is at least thinking about us,” she said. “And the kids, I know they’ll appreciate it.”
Wilson said the family is handling the shooting’s aftermath “the best way we can.”
“We’re trying to just be there for each other and being supportive, praying for one another,” she said. “We’re still trying to just understand it all.”
She said she was helping her mother at a local cafe during the shooting.
“We just sort of took off running,” she said, pointing to a home behind the trailer.
Cutler said the community will continue to need help.
“One of the things I know that trauma does is that it can affect every aspect of our lives,” he said. “My hope is that, first, the community will continue to support one another, which they already do.”
He said he also hopes area churches and organizations will continue to host community events. He said the Muskogee Branch of the NAACP will come to Taft’s Juneteenth celebration later this month.
“I felt the need to just come down here, to say ‘we haven’t forgotten you, we love you,’ just to continue to encourage them,” Cutler said. “This is a strong community.”
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