While servers at a Stow restaurant bustled to help tables of families and friends one spring evening last year, one man dined alone.
He looked to be in his 40s, wearing a hat and work clothes. He appeared to be having a bad day, and nobody at the restaurant seemed to pay him much attention.
That is, except for a little girl at the table next to his, who waved at him happily and smiled wide. Her parents, Joe and Stephanie Nicholson, were eating with a family friend.
“A lot of times for me, when I see people seated alone I start to wonder why they’re alone,” Stephanie said. “I think that’s why we did what we did.”
When the man was finished eating, he found only a business card where his bill would be. The bill was paid by the Nicholson family. The purple card left instead showed a smiling blond boy and the name of a website: The AJ Way.
The family established the pay-it-forward memorial to honor their son, 11-year-old AJ, who died in a 2014 accidental shooting.
“There are people out there meeting him for the first time through this,” said Stephanie. “They get to know a little bit about him, they get to see his face, they get to meet him.”
She said her family has been far from immune to grief, but performing good deeds in AJ’s name has helped them heal.
“It’s kind of like watching him grow up a little bit,” she said. “It’s helping us keep him alive.”
Stephanie and Joe remember AJ as a kind, compassionate boy. He once bought a classmate school supplies with money his grandfather gave him, they recalled.
Since the launch of The AJ Way, purple cards with their son’s face have been gifted to people across the world in the spirit of the boy’s compassion. To date, people in Germany, Australia and all over the United States have expressed their thanks to the Nicholsons. In all, www.theajway.org has seen log-ins from 95 countries.
Spreading message
After AJ’s death, Joe said he and Stephanie wanted an outlet to keep AJ in their hearts — but they also wanted to spread a message to prevent other deaths like his.
“It feels good to see somebody in China heard about AJ,” Joe said, “and if it saves another child’s life, that would be great.”
AJ’s life ended on March 12, 2014. School was closed because of snow and AJ had gone to stay at a relative’s house while his parents went to work. A teenager there showed him his parents’ gun, and an accidental discharge killed the 11-year-old almost instantly.
“What’s so hard is that it was all so avoidable,” Stephanie said. “It’s all so senseless.”
That’s why part of The AJ Way’s mission is to spread awareness about gun safety. One aspect is a partnership with Kent police, which gives gun locks no-questions-asked to anyone who stops by the department.
Kent police Detective Rich Soika said the department had once provided the locks — which work by running a cable through an inactive gun, preventing it from use unless unlocked with a key — through a nonprofit called Project ChildSafe. For one reason or another the department ceased the program, but Soika jump-started it after AJ’s death.
“I thought if I could prevent any other deaths, I should start this up again,” Soika said.
Soika and the Nicholson family now pass out the locks at events in Kent and elsewhere.
Despite providing the locks free of cost, some are hesitant to take them.
“I’ve met so many people who say a locked gun is a useless gun,” Stephanie said. “For us, it’s hard because the only way I see a gun now is its potential to kill. It just seems like common sense to lock them up.”
She and Joe stressed they’re not anti-gun activists. However, they want to provide families with the means to keep weapons safe in their homes, especially when children live there.
“There are no laws in Ohio that require people to lock up their guns,” Stephanie said.
Measure fails
A measure went before the Ohio legislature last year that would have placed Ohio among more than 25 states with “child access prevention laws,” as they’re known. State Rep. Bill Patmon, D-Cleveland, who introduced the bill, blamed gun lobbyists for its failure.
According to the Every Town for Gun Safety Support Fund, at least 278 children were shot — including at least 80 deaths — in the United States last year. The group estimated that two-thirds of accidental shootings involving children could be prevented if guns are stored responsibly.
For the Nicholson family, prevention includes urging fellow parents to inquire about the presence of guns before allowing their children to visit a friend’s home.
“We can’t do anything about gun laws,” Joe said, “but we can get people to ask.”
Stephanie worries sometimes that she’ll shelter her remaining three children: Halston, 4; Camden, 3, and Evie, 1. For her, though, keeping them safe is a priority.
The other priority is ensuring AJ’s memory lives on.
“When a parent loses a child, it’s one of their worst nightmares that people would forget, that they’ll all move on,” she said. “When there’s a new viewer on The AJ Way, it’s like someone else has met my son. That’s important because we were robbed and the world was robbed of a really great kid.”
And AJ’s memory does live on.
In a post dated April 1, 2015, the man who dined alone that spring day last year thanked the family on the memorial website.
“I had just had a very hard day, and it was nice to see such kindness from a complete stranger,” he wrote. “I have kept the AJ Way card and will be sure to ‘pay it forward’ the next time I am dining out. Bless you and your family — you will be in my family’s prayers.”
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGluntABJ.