A Hole in Our Hearts
By Kevin Ring
Our FAMMily lost a piece of our hearts. On Sunday morning, Andrea Strong, our longtime director of member service, passed away at home.
Andrea was FAMM’s first employee, joining the organization in 1992 after her brother was sentenced to a life sentence for a marijuana conspiracy. Like FAMM’s founder Julie Stewart, Andrea knew her brother had made a mistake, but she also knew the time did not fit the crime. She and her husband, Don, flew to Washington, D.C., to meet Julie and to sign up to fight for reform.
For the past 30 years, Andrea has been the first person whom most people met or talked to at FAMM. Andrea helped thousands and thousands of families, mostly by listening to their fears, letting them know they were not alone, and telling them how to fight for their loved one. As she described her job last October:
Hands down, the most common questions are: How I can help? How I can get my son out of jail? The moms and wives who call will cry so much sometimes that I can’t hardly talk to them for a while. Their families are broken. A lot of women don’t know how to live without their husbands, making the decisions and paying the bills and stuff. And they just need me to say, “You can do it.”
Andrea was there for everyone. She didn’t care if a person was going to prison for drugs, guns, child porn, or fraud, and it didn’t matter to her whether the person was Black or white, rich or poor. She gave everyone her time and attention. Andrea said that regardless of what crime a loved one committed, every family’s pain is the same. She and her family had felt that pain firsthand.
When I took over FAMM in 2017, Andrea worried to one colleague that I didn’t exhibit the same heart that Julie had. I was offended for about a day before I realized she was right. As much as I care about the families, I don’t always convey my emotions. But I realized that so long as Andrea was our first point of contact, talking to people and comforting them, reminding them they were not alone or powerless, we would be just fine.
Andrea was FAMM’s heart. Even when she had her own problems, she would spend hour after hour listening to the worries and fears of others. She took pride in the help she gave to others, but she never sought attention or public recognition. In a world that could use a lot more Andrea Strongs, we will dearly miss the one we had.
We will never forget her, and FAMM will strive to bring the same compassion, connection, and love to our work that she always did.
Kevin Ring is FAMM’s president.
