Imagine having the people you love most in your life being taken away from you for no reason. Imagine losing your entire family simply because someone did not like you due to the color of your skin. In everyone's life terrible things happen. Every time a terrible thing happens to someone, that person is forced to deal with it and accept it. Everyone has to accept these occurrences because there are some things that you can not change. However, there are few people that are strong enough to not only accept the bad parts of their life, but also to turn those bad things into positive lessons. Those are the kind of people that truly make a difference in the world.

It was in my second grade class that I first met the most amazing woman I have ever known. Her name is Verna. One day Verna, her husband, and her daughters were walking across the parking lot to their apartment. The man that lived below Verna's family decided that he did not like them because of the color of their skin. And on this day, he saw them walking, took out his gun, and fired three shots, first killing Verna's two daughters and then her husband. He would have fired again, but he had no bullets left in the gun. Verna and her family had never done anything to ever bother or upset this man. His one and only reason for killing them was prejudice.

Since then, Verna has decided to use her experience and share it with everyone she can. She goes around to schools, churches, and other events speaking about racism and what it can do. Recently, I happened to be at an event and had to opportunity to hear her again and eight years later, her story was so memorable that I remembered every single word she said. She has had the strength to dedicate her life to making the world a better place by trying to end racism. I can only imagine how hard it must be to talk about the deaths of people you loved so much. She continues to do it every day simply because she is making a difference.