If you can read this and not feel like crying you have no heart: He really meant that smile for you

Gay teen endured a daily gantlet

As a gentle child grew into adolescence, the taunts and bullying intensified. Finally, Seth Walsh couldn't take any more.
A grandfather's fond memory

Jim Walsh, the grandfather of Seth Walsh, says that when the teenager smiled, "he smiled with his whole face. ... He really meant that smile for you." Seth, 13, hanged himself after being confronted in a Tehachapi park. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

When Seth Walsh came home from school, he would open the gate to a chain-link fence, walk beneath a tall red oak tree and be greeted by five dogs and two cats.

Seth lived with two brothers and a sister, four children from three fathers who were seldom around, supported by their mother who worked long hours as a hairdresser. Their home was a rental, a few blocks from Tehachapi's main street.

He was 13, and in the eyes of his grandparents, Jim and Judy Walsh, he was just a normal kid, pushing into adolescence. They looked forward to watching him grow up and never imagined that the harassment he experienced as a gay teenager, or his suicide, would resonate across the country.

Seth's mother, Wendy, is guarding her privacy, lost in grief, and his friends are keeping quiet at their parents' instructions. Only Jim and Judy are willing to share their memories.

They want to make sure their grandson isn't remembered only as "the gay kid who hung himself," so they tell stories about a bright and precocious child who enjoyed playing with their dog, Bambi, and who liked the Jonas Brothers and Magic Mountain.

"When he smiled," Jim says, "he smiled with his whole face. His eyes twinkled. It wasn't just the smile. You got it from the eyes and the beaming of the face. He really meant that smile for you."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-seth-walsh-20101008,0,6569769,full.story

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:cry:

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They have to punish them doubly.

Who punishes the bullies?

They talk them into putting on uniforms and going off to sand pits to get their balls blown off by IEDs.

>>>>He was a gentle child, they say, who preferred to "relocate bugs" rather than kill them, who made sure his younger brother got his share of Easter eggs and who once apologized to a bed of flowers when he picked one and placed it on the grave of the family dog.>>>>