Legacy House: On Extending Empathy

As the brother of a homicide victim, as well as the brother of a suicide victim, Michael is no stranger to the pernicious effects such tragedies can cause. “I know what it’s like to grow up in a household that has experienced trauma,” he says. When Michael was only nine, his mother received the call that her older son had been killed. She was paying bills at the time. Michael says, “Every single time that she sat down to write a check in the years that followed, she was reminded by that act of the violence that the family had experienced.”