Source The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — More than 30 years ago, a fourth grade classroom devolved when a student got out of hand, cursing at the teacher and throwing furniture.
A boy named Darron Burks stunned the class when he suddenly stood to address him.
“You better be glad you’re not my mama’s kid,” the young Burks told the student. “We came here to get what the teacher has — because we don’t have anything.”
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That leadership and that humility, Burks’ loved ones remembered Saturday, continued to set him apart through his 46 years of life and decades of service, which ended the night of Aug. 29 after a gunman fatally shot the Dallas police officer in southeast Oak Cliff.
Burks was parked in his patrol vehicle outside the For Oak Cliff community center, awaiting an assignment, when the gunman approached from the driver’s side window, raised a handgun and fired.
Since his death, tributes have poured in for the man who’d been a math teacher for about 17 years, then chased his dream of public service through law enforcement, no matter that he was older than many of his colleagues. He was laid to rest Saturday after his funeral, where those who knew him best honored him with anecdotes and descriptions of who he was.
Hundreds filled Watermark Community Church in North Dallas, representing the many communities of which Burks was part: his Paul Quinn College classmates and others adorned in the purple of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity; his fellow parking lot attendants from Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship church, who sat together in their yellow shirts; his law enforcement colleagues, including police academy Class 392, with whom Burks had just graduated in December.
But it was his mother, Cherie Jeffery, who drew the most eyes as police, church, city and educational leaders publicly thanked her for her son. When it was her turn to speak, she stood in front of a portrait of Burks in his police uniform, a purple ribbon pinned on her chest.
Tears rolled down her face as she faced the crowd and paused. Her voice rang out strong.
“I didn’t make him,” she said. “God made him. He loaned Darron to me.”
Jeffery relayed the memory of his fourth grade class and others from his upbringing in Lake Highlands. He’d bring his junior high friends to her when they needed support or didn’t have a relationship with their parents. He called his peers “ma’am” or “sir,” and didn’t smoke, drink or curse (the one time he cursed, he called his uncle to ask what to do, loved ones said).
Although she taught her son life lessons, he ensured she didn’t forget them herself. He’d text Jeffery twice a day. If she didn’t reply, he’d call her out on it the next morning.
“My son honored me every day,” Jeffery said.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Paul Quinn College, where he played football and served as president of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He graduated in 2007 and turned to a life of service.
As a math teacher at Texans CAN Academies, a charter school that helps students recover credits to graduate, he joked around with his students and gave up his lunch hours for kids who needed extra one-on-one time. The school’s former principal, Mene Khepera, told the crowd on Saturday that Burks had a passion that couldn’t be taught.
He’d tell his class to ask more questions, and the deeper the questions became, the more likely they were to find the answer within them, Khepera said. He recalled when he’d walk to Burks’ classroom only to see students out in the hallway with Post-it Notes, split into groups doing different tasks. Burks would walk around to check on each, synchronizing the process.
“Darron Burks wanted the community to be whole,” Khepera said. “He was our moral compass that allowed us to make the decision to strive forward and be true to ourselves. He was that individual who believed in the kids so much.”
Later, Burks prayed how he could better serve, which led him to law enforcement. His teaching only persisted when he joined the Dallas Police Department, Chief Eddie García said.
Burks, the chief said, was gentle, but also strong and dependable, the exact type of person they’d want in a police uniform. In his academy class, officers looked up to him.
When he began to patrol the South Central Patrol Division, community policing came naturally to Burks, who spoke with civilians as a fellow human instead of as an officer. He never stopped teaching, the chief said, but instead of math, he “taught us all life lessons.”
García implored officers in the auditorium — which included Dallas, Fort Worth and several other North Texas agencies — to stand strong despite the grief. He pointed to the courage of Sr. Cpls. Karissa David and Jamie Farmer, who’d responded to check on Burks and were also shot. Police then pursued the gunman to Lewisville and fatally shot him. (Farmer was treated and released from the hospital, while David has been hospitalized but listed as stable.)
The chief told officers it was OK to feel anger, pain and frustration, but said that if Burks was there, he’d be the first to say he chose the profession knowing the dangers and wouldn’t trade it away. Now, the chief said, they must carry out their duty with Burks in mind.
“It has been said the idea is not to live forever, but to create something that will,” García said. “That’s what Darron Burks did. He left a legacy, a life of service, a man of faith, a steadfast friend, brother, son. That is a legacy to be proud of.”
The church filled with the sounds of sobs and sniffles as several leaders rose to honor Burks. State Sen. Royce West, who told Burks’ mother he’d be remembered in “perpetuity.” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who said Burks “literally gave his all” for Dallas. Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, who likened the feeling of grief to “the sharp knife” of an incomplete life.
Burks epitomized “we over me,” Sorrell said, leaving every place better than he’d found it.
Jeffery sat solemnly with loved ones as García gifted her the flag that had been draped around her son’s casket. As music played during the funeral, she raised her hands in the air and stumbled forward to touch her son’s casket. Relatives at her side held her up.
In her speech, she left the crowd with one of the many lessons her son tried to teach others.
“Anytime that I can be of help to any of you, call me,” she said. “I will do my very best, my very best, because that’s what my son would always do.
“He would do his very best.”
Rev. Darrell Thomas, the officiating minister, urged mourners to think of Burks’ death in the context of scripture in Acts 13:36, which reads: “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep.”
Applied to Burks’ life, Thomas said, the meaning is simple.
He did everything he was supposed to do.
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