Michelle Obama mourns slain teenager at Chicago funeral

CHICAGO — She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to.

First lady Michelle Obama, simply by filing into a church pew on Chicago’s South Side on Saturday and mourning the killing of a smiling 15-year-old girl she had never met, spotlighted the everyday gun and gang violence plaguing the nation’s cities.

(Philip Rucker) - A photo of a letter President Obama wrote to Pendleton's parents, as printed in the glossy obituary booklets handed out at the funeral. The text reads: \"Dear Cleopatra and Nathaniel, Michelle and I just wanted you to know how heartbroken we are to have heard about Hadiya’s passing. We know that no words from us can soothe the pain, but rest assured that we are praying for you, and that we will continue to work as hard as we can to end this senseless violence. God Bless, Barack Obama”

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“Genocide,” one eulogist called it, lamenting that guns had “become part of our wardrobe.” Another exhorted the politicians in the pews, “Don’t give us lip service.”

The Rev. Michael Pfleger vowed, “We must become the interrupters of funeral processions seeking to bury our future.”

Since being gunned down in Chicago a week after performing with the King College Prep high school’s majorette team during President Obama’s second inaugural festivities, Hadiya Pendleton has become a national symbol for the innocence lost to senseless shootings.

Pendleton’s killing resonated far beyond the South Side to the White House, where the Obamas drew parallels between Pendleton and their own daughters.

The first lady, who met privately with Pendleton’s family and about 30 of her classmates, did not speak at the funeral, which lasted four hours. But her appearance carried heavy political overtones, coming as the president is pressuring Congress to enact tougher gun laws.

Obama sat quietly as Pendleton was remembered as an honors student and majorette who loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss and aspired to major in pharmacology or journalism in college. She wanted to go to Harvard.

One after another, Pendleton’s teary-eyed classmates recalled their friend’s contagious smile and soft, baby voice. “She tried to tell a scary story, but no one could take her seriously,” one said.

During the inauguration, another classmate recalled, Pendleton wandered around the nation’s capital so much that she began sweating even in the chilly weather.

A week later, a gunman opened fire on Pendleton and about a dozen other teenagers while they were hanging out at a park after school. Police said Pendleton was an innocent victim likely caught in the crossfire of a gang fight.

For the Obamas, Pendleton’s death on Jan. 29 hit home. She went to school only a mile from the Obama family home. The Obamas thought about their daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11, said Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser and close friend of the Obamas.

“It’s personal for us,” Jarrett, who accompanied Michelle Obama to the funeral, said in an interview. “The first lady and I grew up in Chicago. It could have been our daughters. So, as residents of Chicago, residents of the South Side, our heart just goes out to her family. . . . We may not have known her, but she’s a part of our family, too.”

David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to President Obama and also a Chicagoan, said in an interview that Pendleton’s death was “a very sobering thing” to the president, who has grappled with this city’s gun violence epidemic since he represented a South Side district in the Illinois State Senate.

“She put a memorable, recognizable face on what is a grim, stubborn, dismaying problem,” Axelrod said of Pendleton.