Discovering Wes Moore

Wes moves to England after college on a full scholarship to Oxford University. He is the first African American graduate of Johns Hopkins to become a Rhodes Scholar. Years later, he returns to Baltimore to start a fellowship at the White House. He thinks about the other Wes Moore from the same streets with the same name. When he had returned from South Africa, his mother told him she was grateful he was away when all of that happened.

Wes follows the case obsessively. It was a jewelry store robbery gone wrong. The other Wes Moore and his brother Tony shot and killed the store’s security guard, who was an off-duty police officer named Bruce Prothero. Officer Prothero worked at the store as a security guard to make extra money for his family and was a father of five. Four men were charged with his murder, including Richard Antonio Moore and his half-brother Wes, and both were sentenced to life sentences.

Wes can’t help but think about how much in common he has with the other Wes Moore. He writes him a letter in prison. In the first letter he introduces himself and explains how he had heard about him. Wes feels regret after mailing the letter but was pleasantly surprised when to get a letter back. They become pen pals for a time, and then Wes starts visiting the other Wes Moore in prison. They become close, even if they have disagreements. Wes still sees this man as a human regardless of his heinous crime.

The life story of the other Wes Moore is told through these prison visitations and letters. He was six years old when he first met his father, Bernard, a drunk. Mary, his mother, didn’t want his father around her or the boys, Richard, Wes, and Tony. She figured she and her children were better off without him. Wes recalls a time when he and his mother ran into his father by accident. Bernard didn’t recognize Wes despite them looking identical. Wes explains that his mother had become pregnant with Tony when she was 15. Mary’s mother made sure she finished school. She graduated from Baltimore City Community College with honors, and with a Pell Grant she was accepted to Johns Hopkins.

With no father and his mother only working part time while attending university, Wes’s family struggled financially. Halfway through her degree, Mary’s Pell Grants had been cut. Without financial aid, she couldn’t finish her degree, and the part time job she had during college became her full time job. Wes was eight years old when she saved enough to move them out of the Cherry Hill homes to a suburb called Northwood. Wes considered himself the man of the house because Tony spent his time in the Murphy Homes project—known as the “Murder Homes”—with his father selling drugs.

Tony, six years older, is Wes’s idol. Tony dropped out of school in eighth grade and is frustrated that Wes isn’t doing well in school because he doesn’t want Wes to be like him. Wes can’t help but feel his brother is being hypocritical. Wes wasn’t interested in school and instead focused on football. Wes’s best friend Woody was on the football team too, and they hang out with Paul, or “White Boy.” Paul and Woody are Wes’s closest friends. Wes had to repeat the sixth grade at a new school when they moved, and Mary was afraid he would drop out.

Wes met a kid on his block who told him he could get a headset like the one he wore by pushing a button when someone comes by and then getting paid after his shift. He knew it was everything Tony warned him against. If he said yes, he’d be a drug runner. Wes saw it as making some cash for talking into a headset. He was influenced by the new clothes and jewelry his brother always had. His mother said he should be thankful for what he has, but soon Wes’s bedroom was filled with Nike sneaker boxes. Tony confronted Wes and beat him until Mary broke them up. Wes was again upset at the hypocrisy of his brother.

Mary searches his room when he’s at school and finds the box of various drugs and vials. She was most upset about him lying and saying it was money from working as a DJ. The box is empty when he gets home, and Mary tells him she flushed it. He tells her it was over $4,000 worth of drugs, and he’s going to have to pay someone back for that. Mary tells him she doesn’t care and that he’s 12 years old and will no longer be doing that.

When Wes is 15 he develops a crush on Alicia, and two months later she is pregnant. Tony had just become a father when Wes told him, and Mary had given birth a year earlier. Tony thought it was funny that Wes would have a new brother, a son, and a nephew all around the same age. Alicia wanted them to become a family, but Wes didn’t want the responsibility since he didn’t know what the role of a father meant having grown up without one. Wes wanted to continue selling drugs and seeing other girls. After Alicia gave birth, Wes went to juvenile detention for fighting over a girl named Melissa, who had a boyfriend named Ray. Wes shot Ray, and the bullet went through his shoulder. He was released from detention after six months. He returned to school after having missed another grade while being away. Wes’s full-time job was selling drugs by the end of 10 grade.

By 21, the stress wasn’t worth it anymore. He was tired of the funerals, risk, and arrests. His bosses were making the most profit, but they were able to remain anonymous. He wanted an out. Wes had gotten caught selling by an undercover cop, and he now had four children, two with Alicia, and two new babies with Cheryl. Cheryl was a heroin addict, and Wes was pained that after years of seeing addicts on the street now his children’s mother was one.

Wes’s friend Levy advises him to go to the Job Corps. Two weeks later, Wes takes the bus to the Job Corps campus with Levy. Wes finishes near the top of his class. He picked carpentry as his professional specialty. His teacher, Mr. Botkin, motivated him. Wes built a small playhouse for his five-year-old daughter. The playhouse represented his “way of protecting his little girl, sheltering her even when he wasn’t there next to her” (129).

Wes felt like he had a new direction in life after graduating from Job Corps. He wanted to be a provider and make money to support his family, but Wes struggled to find a permanent job. He worked 10-hour days, and when he came home he was too tired to play with his kids. He realized in his absence that his problems had piled up. Alicia and Cheryl needed money, and his mother needed money since she was raising two of Wes’s kids as well as Tony’s kids too. Selling drugs quickly became his full-time job.

Mary watched the news as they covered the robbery of J. Brown Jewelers. Prothero, the security guard, had five children, including triplets, and he was supposed to be off work that day but had covered a shift for his coworker. He had followed the four robbers out and pointed his gun at them from the parking lot. As he moved closer to them, they shot him dead and drove off. He was 35 years old.

The cops arrested two men selling the jewelry the next day. Tony and Wes were shown on the news, and Mary is heartbroken. At four in the morning, the cops showed up looking for her sons. They found them 12 days later in Philadelphia at their uncle’s house. At home, Mary wept. A year later, they were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Tony was convicted of the shooting. Wes, at 24, went to trial and said he hadn’t been present at the robbery. They found him guilty, which he hadn’t seen coming: “It’s almost impossible to tell the difference between second chances and last chances” (134). With the judge’s decision made, Wes Moore would be spending the rest of his life in prison, only able to see his family during visits.