Exactly 15 years after Ryan Henderson and Chavares Block were killed in a drive-by shooting on campus, their mothers shared an emotional embrace in the same spot where their sons were shot.
“This was a place that never should have happened. This is a place of education. This is a place to begin life, not end life,” Ryan’s mother Tamara Henderson said.
The shooting happened around 9 p.m. on Oct. 26, 2008.
On Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023, UCA honored the lives of Henderson and Block with a memorial service in front of Arkansas Hall where the events of that night 15 years ago occurred.
Family members, friends and faculty who worked at UCA at the time of the shooting gathered to honor the memory of the lives of Henderson, an undeclared freshman interested in teaching, and Block, a sophomore pre-engineering major.
Nia Kelley opened the memorial with a singing performance of “Trouble of the World,” a hymn by Mahalia Jackson.
Provost Patricia Poulter said, “The trouble of the world came to campus when we lost Ryan Henderson and Chavares Block — when we lost them to senseless gun violence.”
Captain Jamie Boothe, the last remaining UCAPD officer who was working the night of the shooting, presented a wreath at the memorial ceremony.
Boothe stood at the back of the service in front of the Henderson-Block memorial bench outside of Arkansas Hall with the wreath.
During the service, he walked the wreath to the front and placed it in front of the podium. He took a moment to kneel and offer his condolences to the front-row seated Block family.
President Houston Davis, although not president of UCA at the time of the shooting, took the time to speak at the memorial about the impact that Henderson and Block left on the UCA campus.
“While we don’t need physical spaces to remind us of these outstanding young men and who they were, the benches in this area are a place where we can pause and reflect. Anyone can take a moment to quietly meditate during a full and active day and know that everything will be all right,” Davis said.
Davis presented the Block family with a flower arrangement during the ceremony. The Henderson family did not make it to the memorial until it was nearly over.
“You’ve got a whole group of students, faculty and staff that have come to the university since that time and they don’t know the story of these two young men. They don’t necessarily know the history behind the memorial. It’s a good opportunity to be able to remind our community of its importance — why they’re important. They’re part of the story of UCA. They’re part of the story of Conway, part of the story of Arkansas,” Davis said.
Davis said he remembers hearing about the story of the shooting when he came to UCA in 2017, and that the campus has learned a lot from that incident.
“These are the things that college campuses and educational institutions live in fear of all the time … We’ve certainly learned a lot from a safety and security standpoint,” Davis said.
Despite the safety advancements made because of Henderson and Block’s deaths, Davis said the more important lesson learned was how the UCA community responded to and grew from the tragedy.
“To me, the most important lesson is that you never want something like that to happen, but does the community get stronger or does it rip the community apart? I think our community got stronger,” Davis said.
Rev. E.C. Maltbia, a UCA trustee, was welcomed to the podium to share a brief message of motivation with UCA students and faculty.
“When I think about 15 years ago, when we gathered on this campus as a hurting family, to this very moment today, there’s one word that comes to my mind and I simply want to share it with you today. That one word is resilience,” Maltbia said.
Maltbia defined resilience as “advance despite adversity.” He challenged the UCA community to continue making personal advancements and collective advancements toward the betterment of the university.
“We cannot let anything distract us from the goal of students graduating from this university,” Maltbia said.
The UCA Gospel Choir closed the memorial by singing “Jesus Promised.” Family members sang along with the choir through their tears.
After the service ended, friends and family came to hug and reminisce on the lives of the boys and the night of the shooting with the Block family. Tamara Henderson and her husband made their way to the front where they found Block and the mothers held each other as they cried over their sons.
Henderson said both her family and the Block family are grateful to UCA for continuing to honor the lives of their sons.
“He was my baby,” Henderson said. “He was her baby,” Henderson said of Block. “We just appreciate UCA continuing honoring that moment and letting them know that this could never happen to another student,” Henderson said.
The memorial service allowed the Henderson and Block families to reconnect and grieve together 15 years after the fatal shooting of their sons.
The mothers of the boys exchanged phone numbers after the memorial to keep in touch.