A Grandmother Remembers Her Grandson

Editor’s Note: Robert Denardes Whittle Jr. was fatally shot on Aug. 6 at Ike’s Food Center on Douglas Road in Coconut Grove. Loretta Scippio-Whittle, the president of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, wrote this letter in memory of her 30-year-old grandson who grew up in Coconut Grove.  

To the Editor:

My grandson Robert Whittle Jr. joined that innumerable caravan of ancestors on August 6, 2025. His premature demise was unexpected and devastating to the family. 

To cope with Robert’s departure, I look at the glass half full and decided to not look through the rearview mirror of his thirty years on earth, but to do a periscopic examination through the windshield of his time on this planet. 

His affirmations that he placed on the wall by his front door in his apartment reflect who he was. He wrote I am smart. 

Robert was so intelligent. He could discuss the Ancient Kings of Africa, the prophets of the Bible, the pros and cons of aero dynamics and space. Well-rounded was he because he understood that reading makes a ready man.

Another affirmation he wrote on the wall was I am loved. 

He loved his family and his friends unconditionally. He spoke positively and encouraged everyone that they could accomplish whatever they set out to do. 

In fact, two minutes before he met his untimely fate, he was on the phone consoling his cousin whose daughter was in college. 

He always told me every day, “Grandma, I love you.” He put his love in action in many ways to me. Most importantly, he would come to church and sit by me and say, “Grandma, you look so pretty and you smell so good.” 

He would record a video of me while I was cooking; we would watch college and professional basketball and football together, neither of us liking the same teams. 

Hours before his passing, he was in my kitchen eating and cleaning at the same time. The very last thing he said to me as he exited my front door was, as always, “Grandma, I love you.” 

He loved all the adages I would teach him that my father taught me. Such as what you put between your ears, nobody can take it, and if you’re hungry lay on your stomach. He would laugh and say, “Grandma, I am going to put these proverbial sayings in my phone.” 

The kid was so loving to me. Faithful was another affirmation he placed on his wall. He learned in Sunday school that faith is the subject of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. 

He believed that if your faith is the size of a mustard seed you can actualize whatever it is that you have in mind to do. As proof of that, he wanted to become a butcher at his place of employment, and he accomplished that goal.

Loretta Scippio-Whittle
Coconut Grove