Rita Roseman never fashioned a balloon arch before, but Saturday seemed like a fitting time to master the skill.
After inflating the balloons, she framed them in an arch, done up in the orange and blue Evanston Township High School school pride colors.
“It really set the stage,” the proud mother said.
The Roseman front yard on Pitner Avenue became the gathering point for her son, Micquel Rosema, and his friends, before a limousine arrived, whisking them to Navy Pier for the school prom that night.
“My yard was packed with people,” Rita said.
The group included three of Micquel’s closest friends, like him, student-athletes. “The four of them have played together since 8th grade,” Rita said.
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Her son is going to Clark Atlanta to play basketball there. “The other three guys are going away to play football,” she said.
“We’re all sad to see them go but we’re very proud of them, the young men they have become,” said Rita. “Like one mom said, ‘We cleaned those dirty uniforms and put them in suits.’ It’s amazing how these boys have grown, and how they’ve stayed so close and focused the four years.”
One of the close friends in the original group, though, wasn’t there.
Dajae Coleman, a promising basketball player in the Evanston program, then 14, was fatally shot in September of 2012 while walking home from a party — a victim of mistaken identity, police said at the time.
“It was challenging for the boys,” said Rita, a member of the Dajae Coleman Foundation (dc3f.org).
“They stayed committed and focused,” she said, sounding proud of the group’s accomplishments.
Tiffany Rice, the mother of Dajae, said Rita Roseman sent her photographs after the ceremony of Dajae’s classmates pouring out grape juice from a glass as a tribute to him. The friends also each raised three fingers in the air to represent the number Dajae wore, Roseman said.
“I had no idea they were going to do that,” Rice said.
Micquel and Dajae were teammates since 6 or 7 years old, she said. Altogether, Dajae’s classmates “have really led the effort” to keep his memory alive, his mother said.
“They lived their entire high school lives dealing with that grief and that loss and being a crutch to each to see each other through it,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been contacted by kids who in some capacity honored him.”
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