Community mourns Englewood’s Raydell Lacey, founder of nonprofit Not Before My Parents

Chicago’s Englewood community is remembering the life of Raydell Lacey, who died from cancer last month at age 68.

Lacey had spent years trying to prevent others from experiencing the trauma and grief that follows a life cut short by violence because she, like many others, had lived through it. She lost her daughter Elonda Lacey in a 1994 slaying.

So she founded the nonprofit organization Not Before My Parents in 2012 to support parents seeking counseling, attending grief support groups and aiding families with funeral expenses.

Then, in 2016, Raydell Lacey lost her grandson, Erick Lacey Jr., in a Back of the Yards shooting. That death and Chicago’s violence led Lacey’s eldest son, Erick Lacey Sr., to move to North Carolina.

“Behind that happening with my son, my escape was chess. I used to play chess all the time,” Erick Lacey said. “That was the only thing that got my mind away from stuff and when she found that out, just seeing it, she came up with the idea: Chess Moves Against Violence.”

Raydell Lacey told the Tribune in 2019, “I was looking at him and I noticed he was so calm, he was smiling and having fun and I just thought that’s a tool that could be a solution to some of the violence.”

She started a chess club in September 2016. Erick Lacey recalled his mom proposing the idea of using the chess club to collaborate with police, and he laughingly rejected the concept. But she persuaded him to do it. Looking back, he said it was one of the best decisions he ever made.

The initiative brings police together with residents in the Englewood neighborhood, especially youths. The club meets regularly at the Englewood District police station with participants playing chess against police officers in the community room space inside and outside the 7th District facility.

The bridge-building endeavor garnered Lacey awards from the American Red Cross of Chicago and recognition from the FBI Chicago Citizens Academy Alumni Association.

“It went beautifully — it went from people seeing police to speaking to them, having a brief conversation with them; it started really changing things,” Erick Lacey said.

Raydell Lacey, aka Rae/Nana/Mama Rae, died on April 17. The loss left a hole in the neighborhood.

Sgt. Oneta Sampson, a friend and chess collaborator with Lacey spoke at the standing-room-only homegoing services May 4 at the A.A. Rayner and Sons Funeral Home, reminding those in attendance that when one remembers Raydell Lacey, they should remember the word intention.

“Everything that she did was intentional; Not Before My Parents was intentional,” Sampson said. “Englewood at that time was suffering. The city was suffering as a whole. What better place to make something incredible happen that can translate across the city? Chess.”

Sampson said she brought chess into people’s lives because she needed “people to learn not to move before they think.”

Family and friends say that Lacey touched hundreds, if not thousands, with her organization. Before she was in hospice, she was planning on bringing chess to Millennium Park, around the Bean.

Englewood native Pha’Tal Perkins said Lacey’s death was hard for the neighborhood. She was always genuine with her love and care of those she encountered. He remembers their talks, the first time she called him son. She gave him a chess set.

As executive director of Think Outside Da Block, a nonprofit focused on youth development, violence prevention/ intervention, trauma awareness and civic engagement in the Englewood neighborhood, Perkins would go to Lacey’s chess events and interact with youths or play against officers.

“Chess … it could be looked at as this nerdy thing, so for her to bring this into a space and have people who you would see and say, ‘Wait, you know how to play chess?’ made it OK to learn,” Perkins said. “She was always making sure everybody felt welcome at the events. She created spaces where it ain’t typically the thing to do to interact with law enforcement. She bridged that gap in a lot of different ways. To be riding up 63rd Street and see all these people in front of the police station, playing chess, eating and playing music. It was a super dope environment.”

Michelle Rashad, executive director of Imagine Englewood if, a West Englewood nonprofit that offers year-round enrichment opportunities for youths and support services and skill-building opportunities for adults and families, met Lacey in 2018 at the Greater Englewood Unity Day, a day the organization hosts annually to clean and beautify the community. Rashad, a West Englewood native, thought that Lacey’s funeral services coinciding with the 11th annual event this year was very much in sync with the theme of the day: support.

“Showing up for each other and collaboration will always be something that I think about when I think of Ms. Raydell,” Rashad said. “She was always about showing up for other people and really had the spirit of community. Ms. Raydell is a beacon of unity and community and that legacy of hers will live on forever.”

Lacey’s legacy was honored with a moment of silence at the cleanup event. Rashad said Lacey’s organization opened the doors of police stations in a more positive light, one of community.

“When we think about violence prevention, we have to think about creating those safe spaces where young people understand that they’re loved and supported so that they don’t take a different route that leads to a loss of life,” Rashad said. “In doing her work of making sure we as parents and grandparents are not burying children and grandchildren, we’re creating spaces where children feel loved and celebrated and connected to role models … that was a very unique approach of Ms. Raydell.”

Keith Harris, a volunteer football coach with the Chicago Park District since 1991, lost his son in August 2020. He said Lacey was one of the first people to give him words of encouragement, to be a shoulder when he needed it. Lacey’s sincereness was her secret sauce, Harris said. And she loved the great big family that was Englewood.

“You got people where you can actually tell where their heart is, and where their spirit is, by the work that they do. It was never about her, it was always about the people she was serving,” Harris said. “She left a big impression on a lot of people … the people in the park district, the police department, the CAPS Department. … She was a mother to everybody, everybody who knew her, embraced her as a mother.”

At the funeral, Raymone Lacey thanked his mom for who she was for the community, saying that although she was not perfect, she was perfect for him and his family.

The daughter of Samuel Hanchett and Delores Lacey, Raydell Lacey’s life “epitomized love, resilience and service.” Traveling to New York to attend Broadway shows, and breaking bread with family and friends are things she enjoyed when she wasn’t working as a construction flagger until she retired in January.

Raydell Lacey was a teenage mom who, by the time she was 20, had four kids and her own house on the South Side, because she worked at a bank and a gas station. But her life would eventually take a different path, Erick Lacey said during the services. His mom served time in prison twice — six years in Illinois state prison, and federal time in Iowa, serving 7½ years of a 10-year sentence. When she came home from Iowa, Lacey turned her life around.

“I’m not saying that like it’s great; I’m saying she’s been gone twice and she had a better job than the average person, making good money and doing this (Not Before My Parents),” he said. “My mother had police friends and now has a son who loves them. What I’m saying is whatever is going on in your life, it can be changed. One of the things she always said was, ‘Don’t nothing beat a failure but a try.'”

With Not Before My Parents, Lacey garnered national recognition, as CBS News correspondent Adriana Díaz attested at her funeral. She crossed paths with Lacey while doing stories on the nonprofit in 2016 and 2018.

“We visited the district and saw some police officers being beaten in chess by little kids,” Díaz said. “It’s because she adopted the community, was a mother and grandmother to the community, that aldermen and alderwomen from Englewood are planning to introduce a resolution into the City Council on May 22.” The resolution honors Lacey and extends sympathy to her family and friends.

Stanee’ Wills considered Lacey her second mom. The pair bonded after Wills’ father was a victim of violence in the Hamilton Park neighborhood. Wills started volunteering with Lacey’s organization, helping run its social media and writing grant proposals.

“She was always about building connections. She was all about unity,” Wills said. “She would always talk about if a kid is stealing out of the candy store, maybe if an officer knew him through her program, they would know that he was hungry and that they wouldn’t arrest him for stealing. They will try to find resources for him to get money to eat. It was her mission to make sure that youth understood that they didn’t have to resort to violence when they’re in situations where they feel they need to fight.”

Wills nominated Lacey for the Red Cross award. As a youth services coordinator with the community policing arm of the Chicago Police Department, Wills read an honorary commendation from the CPD’s Office of Community Policing at Lacey’s homegoing — an honor recognizing her past contributions to make the city a safer place. Sgt. Janie Wilson Brown and Rashanah Baldwin, both collaborators with Lacey in her nonprofit work, thanked the Lacey family for sharing their mother with the greater Chicago area.

“Miss Rae brought us all together. … As you can see, we’re all here,” Wilson Brown said. “Those relationships that were built with the police, we never thought was possible before Miss Rae made it happen. Erick made it happen … all of the coaches and everybody who came to spend their time with the children in the 7th District made that happen.”

“She believed in her program, in the power of chess because people need to think strategically before they act,” Wills said. “That was her thing.”

A nephew stood before the congregation on a spring Saturday to say that before Lacey passed, he made a commitment to her that Not Before My Parents won’t end. Instead, the family is looking to expand the program to other states.

“We definitely have to continue it,” Erick Lacey said. “She’ll come back and haunt me if I don’t.”

Lacey is also survived by her daughters Ericka Lacey, Dominique Thomas and Dakaria Thomas; 28 grandchildren; 18 great-grandchildren; three sisters; and two brothers.