Eve Carson

It turns out that we moved into the neighborhood where Eve Carson (http://universityrelations.unc.edu/alert/carson/) grew up. Her parents live on our street, three blocks down. We got a copy of the neighborhood directory and I happened to open it to their entry, with her listed as their child. We recognized (from the news footage) the church she was buried from on our first visit to Athens. Three or four houses in the blocks around our house have her picture up on their front doors. We were chatting with some neighbors tonight about the difficulty of sorting out health insurance and financial planning and they recommended her father as a financial advisor. There was an album release party last weekend; the profits benefit the scholarship fund.

I know there's always more national media coverage of attractive young blonde women when tragedy strikes them, but I honestly don't think that the local (both Chapel Hill and Athens) reaction to her murder was because she was a pretty white woman. Every murdered person is somebody's child, and is special to several, or many, people, but Eve seems to have been someone special to almost everyone she knew. Five thousand people at UNC gathered in the couple of hours after her death was announced. I find myself tearing up about her every few days now that we're living here.