09/07/09: 700 Attend Asa Hill Celebration of Love ‘Home Going’ Turned Wedding

Original YNN Buffalo Air Date: 09/07/09
Hundreds filled a Buffalo church to celebrate the love of a little boy who lost his life following a multiple car crash.
African drum beats filled Buffalo’s Elmwood Village honoring a young life cut short.
Seven year old Asa Hill was injured in an eight car pileup on the throughway Thursday.
“Once I heard that he may not live that threw me into a hard place. I have not been taking it too easily,” said Morgan Brown a neighborhood friend who played with Hill.
Asa passed away Friday at Woman and Children’s Hospital.
Monday nearly 700 people packed the Unitarian Universalist Church at Elmwood Avenue and Ferry Street. Nearly 100 more listened to the service from outside.
“Asa was so alive! He was not only inquisitive. He loved to ask you questions about who you are, where you are going? And then he would share,” remembers elder Emile Latimer.
Asa even shared his life after death as an organ donor. His father Amilcar Hill says his son’s life represents love.
“You know we had a vision of how we wanted the day to go. We wanted people to be able to come in and be able to celebrate asa’s life and leave with a feeling of community and love and hope and joy,” said Amilcar Hill.
“Everybody came in with a loving open minded heart. The lovingness of the family, the lovingness of the child. That life is still living in the mind and hearts of the people,” added Hill family friend Ras Jomo Akono
The funeral, turned ‘home going’ had an especially happy ending.
Asa’s parents Amilcar Hill and Rahwah Ghirtatzion tied the knot in a surprise wedding.
Hill says the overwhelming outpouring of love and support from the Buffalo community demonstrates the power of love.
“You can ask somebody what I can do for you, but sometimes you don’t recognize that you’re just doing it. And today for a lot of people just coming and being a part of this is what I needed,” smiled Amilcar Hill.