Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Jones maintains strongly that love comes with limits.
"No one has the right to love you to death," he says, repeating what has become a slogan for his campaign against domestic abuse.
His family was first touched by domestic violence in 1991 when his cousin, a 33-year-old mother of three, was slain by her husband before he turned the gun on himself.
Then, two years ago, another cousin and mother of three, Tasha Veney, died in a murder-suicide carried out by her ex-boyfriend in front of the Johnstown, Pa., day care center where she had just dropped off their 11-month-old son. She was 29.
"A lot of times these women live in silence, and we don’t know all the turmoil they go through in these relationships," he said. "It’s not until something tragic — like they get beat up really bad or they get killed — that we then begin … (to) understand what it is that they’re going through."
Jones says he was motivated to action by the death of Veney in April 2011 while he was living in Washington state.
In May 2011 he founded an organization that he calls Walking in Her Shoes which seeks to call attention to those under the shadow of domestic violence. As part of that drive, he organized a benefit walk in his hometown of Johnstown to raise awareness of the threats of sexual assault, domestic abuse and child abuse.
Now, after the third annual walk in Johnstown last month, he is bringing the event to the isles, where he works at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
"It was just something to do for Tasha (that) ended up growing into something bigger to help women anywhere," he said. "When people found out about it here in Honolulu, they wanted me to put something together here."
The event will begin with a 2-mile walk at 10 a.m. Aug. 24, beginning and ending at the Aliamanu Military Reservation Community Center near Red Hill. Then, until about 12:30 p.m. there will be guest speakers and an open-microphone session.
Attendees will be encouraged to tell their stories and add the names of lost loved ones to the organization’s "roll call." As of Sunday the roll had 19 names.
Jones said the Honolulu walk is free and open to everyone. But those who want to participate will be registered automatically if they buy a T-shirt or other merchandise via the organization’s website, www.walkinginhershoes.org, by Friday. T-shirts are $20 for children or adults through size large, and $22 for larger sizes.
Guest speakers will include Christopher Yanuaria, program coordinator for the Consortium for Health Safety & Support for the Domestic Violence Action Center; Joseph Rosales of the Hawaii State Coalition Against Domestic Violence; and Madeline Watson, a domestic violence survivor.
Jones said he hopes expanding Walking in Her Shoes to Hawaii will help him reach his long-term goal of enlarging the organization to the point where it can provide safe havens and resources for those in need.
"I hate to hear people say, ‘Well, why didn’t she just leave?’" he said. "It’s not that easy for women to just leave, because we don’t know what the abuser has told them."
He added later, "I wish people would stop blaming the victim and, you know, pay more attention to the victim because there’s signs. They give us things. We just either refuse to see them, or we’re one of those people that say, ‘It’s none of my business; I’m not going to get involved.’ And we can’t do (that)."
Jones said he recently designed the organization’s logo — a crossed purple ribbon sprouting a pair of women’s legs — at the encouragement of the mother of a 17-year-old girl killed in 1984.
"People walk for cancer, people walk for lupus, Alzheimer’s and all this stuff, but rarely do people walk for domestic violence," he recalls she told him.
Jones said he is obtaining a trademark for the logo.
The slogan, he said, was inspired by people often saying, "I love you to death" or "I love him/her to death" in a positive way.
"I said to myself, ‘That’s it — that’s the slogan: No one has the right to love you to death,’" he said. "It kind of stuck and people really liked it."
