Help Honor Stephen Tyrone Johns

We need to honor Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39,  the security guard who was gunned down June 10 by a white supremacist at the entrance to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“A soft-spoken, gentle giant,”  Milton Talley, a former employee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, told the Washington Post.

More from the Post:

Johns, a 1988 graduate of Crosslands High School in Temple Hills, lived in an apartment in the Temple Hills area. Friends said he had a son.

Allen Burcky, another former museum employee, said last night that workers there considered each other “like family” and that Johns was “very courteous, very helpful.”

Lourdes Padilla, the mother of a close friend, said that Johns trained as a plumber but that she didn’t think he had ever entered the trade. He remarried about a year ago, Padilla said.

Johns’s sister, Jacqueline Carter, declined to comment as she entered her home in Temple Hills. “She’s in bad shape right now,” said a man who was driving her.

Yhe American Jewish Committee’s Washington, D.C. chapter has set up a memorial fund to benefit the family of Officer Johns. The organization said it will soon have a place on its Web site, www.ajc.org, where one can contribute.  Those who want to donate immediately should send checks made out to the American Jewish Committee, with “Holocaust Museum Memorial Fund” in the memo line, to:

American Jewish Committee, Washington Chapter

C/O Melanie Maron

1156 15th Street, NW, Suite 1201

Washington DC 20005

One hundred percent of the contribution will go to the Johns family.

The Holocaust Museum, at www.ushmm.org said it will also be taking donations at its site as well.

Read why the shooter did not act alone.