Nancy Gray passed the broken windows of the First Midwest Bank in downtown Aurora as she ran to join her husband, who was already guarding her mother’s store while vandals ransacked nearby businesses. She felt the sting of tear gas in her eyes as she approached her husband, who had taken tear gas to his face and was begging her to please come get him, he couldn’t see.
Gray and her husband, Kenneth, said they stayed at her mother’s bridal store, Creaciones Morelos, on Broadway for hours Sunday night as crowds clashed with police and looted some neighboring businesses. Many stores along Broadway, at the eastern edge of downtown, were destroyed as crowds smashed glass windows, and police squad cars and a Dumpster burned.
Gray is Hispanic and her husband is black, and she said they support the peaceful protest movement that has surged following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But looters and vandals seemed to be piggybacking onto a legitimate movement, and were only hurting the community, the Grays said.
“My heart was beating so fast,” she said. “It was heart wrenching to see how they were destroying all these other businesses, and you couldn’t do anything about it.”
Gray was at her Oswego home Sunday night when a cousin sent her a video of a jewelry store on Broadway being broken into. Nearby was Creaciones Morelos, the bridal store Gray’s mother has run for nearly 20 years, Gray said. She and Kenneth decided to try to protect it.
“Much like my family, they’ve come from little to nothing,” Kenneth Gray said. “And they’ve worked hard, day in, day out, to make sure that their family is taken care of, and to make sure that they have a legacy to leave for them.”
They were ultimately successful. The store windows were not smashed, and the store wasn’t looted. Still, when the chaos quieted down, they and their family moved the dresses in the window displays to the back of the store and boarded up, in case the situation worsened.
When Gray and her husband first arrived downtown, he ran out of the car first while she tried to park as far away as possible. By the time she approached him he had taken tear gas to his face, and she pulled him across the street.
As he recovered, someone walked by with a gallon of milk they poured on his stinging face, Kenneth Gray said.
They returned to their store, where they stood guard for hours.
They saw other business owners protecting their stores too, and they tried to help each other out, Kenneth Gray said. Men from a nearby barber shop offered help, and at the end of the night the Grays tried to board up a neighboring store where the door had been broken.
Had the Grays been the only ones guarding a store they probably would have left because of the danger, Kenneth Gray said, but standing with others in the community of family-owned businesses gave them a sense of solidarity.
As they stood guard, Gray said she saw someone trying to sell looted goods in the street in front of them.
She said the people she saw vandalizing and looting didn’t appear to be protesters.
“That’s not right,” Gray said. “This is not the way to do it. You’re hurting your community, like minority community.”
Moving forward, Gray said the future is full of heartache. Between the COVID-19 shutdown and the recent violence they are not sure they will keep the store at its current location, though they said they are working with the landlord on security measures and a possible payment plan.
This time of year is typically lucrative for the store with weddings, quinceaneras and baptisms, but most events have been canceled or postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. And, though they are not considering moving the store out of fear, they now want to ensure they also have the proper safety measures.
“It’s disappointing,” Gray said. “You don’t even know if you want to continue with this business if this is what we’re looking forward to at this point.”
sfreishtat@tribpub.com
