To the Editor:
We are so saddened by the senseless killing of Meleia Willis-Starbuck '07 ("Willis-Starbuck murdered in off-campus shooting," July 19), such a wonderful Berkeley High School (2003) and Dartmouth College student.
We sold our home at 2235 Browning Street near Bancroft Way in west Berkeley to the Willis-Starbucks in 1999. Meleia was 13 years old at the time. My wife and I were so happy that a wonderful family would be able to live in the home in which we raised our three children for 34 years. Meleia would live in our daughter Sarah's room.
We bought our home in 1965 because we wanted to live in an integrated neighborhood and have our children attend integrated public schools. Browning Street was settled by Finns, Swedes, Greeks and Italian working class people in the 1920s. African-Americans moved to Berkeley in the 1940s from Louisiana and Texas to take jobs in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond. By the 1960s Browning Street was interracial and intergenerational. The Willis-Starbucks wanted to live in Berkeley so that their children could attend Berkeley schools.
