Chords of Hope in Grief Over Son's Death

Aaron Brown, whose love for the guitar began at 11, was shot by an off-duty Alexandria police officer. (Family Photo)

When he was around 11 years old, Aaron Brown started turning into the young man he would eventually become. He let his hair grow long, and he picked up a guitar.

He took guitar at Annandale High School from the day he got there to the day he graduated. He took private lessons, too. He could pluck out the mournful notes of "Shenandoah" on his acoustic guitar and shred Black Sabbath licks on his electric.

"He wanted to make it his life," Aaron's mother, Cheri Brown, told me. "He would have loved to have made it big and become a rock star."

That's fine, Cheri and Jeff Brown always used to tell him, but you need a backup plan. Okay, Aaron said. If I can't make a living playing music, I'll make a living teaching it.

And then Aaron was killed, shot a year ago after he and a group of friends left an IHOP without paying and an off-duty Alexandria police officer decided the car they were in was trying to run him down. Aaron was 18.

While dealing with their grief, the Browns braced for the outpouring of support they knew would materialize. How best to channel it all?

How best to remember the kid who picked up a guitar at 11 and hardly ever put it down, the kid who at 18 wrote the only check he'd ever write in his life: to a music store for a new electric guitar.

The answer came when Jeff Googled the terms "guitar" and "charity" and discovered Guitars Not Guns, a nonprofit group founded in 2000 in California by a foster parent named Ray Nelson. The group teaches at-risk kids to play the guitar in the hope, Cheri said, that it can "help their character, help them to be proud of themselves, help them accomplish something. It's a lot of positive energy directed at making their lives a little less frenetic."

Skip Chaples, the Boy Scout troop leader who had helped Aaron become an Eagle Scout, offered to form a Virginia chapter of Guitars Not Guns. Volunteers offer eight-week lessons at five Fairfax County community centers and Boys & Girls Clubs, and Skip is looking to expand to Fredericksburg, Richmond and beyond.

"For the most part, these kids have never held a guitar," he said. "These are typically kids who can't afford instruments or lessons."

They get the loan of a guitar for the duration of the lessons, and if they pass a playing test at the end of eight weeks, it's theirs to keep. Of the 24 kids who took the first beginner class in the fall, nine were promoted to the second level. All the others decided to sign up again.

"It's a little different from a normal music lesson in that we're also mentoring them," Skip said. "These are kids that need good adult role models. Just the fact that adults are showing up and working with them is as important as the music lessons."