Alan Gray’s vibrant personality and shining smile could brighten anyone’s day. Even his mother’s coworkers would ask, “Where’s your son with the big smile?”
“Every story is really the same,” William Harmon, one of Alan’s younger brothers, shared. “He was always smiling, always laughing and loved to drink.”
In 2019, Alan would have celebrated his 35th birthday, surrounded by his family and friends, and likely drinking his alcohol of choice: tequila. Instead of celebrating another milestone, Alan’s urn now sits on a bar cart in the family’s South Philadelphia home.
“He’s over there, on the bar with the bottles,” Alan’s mother, Lisa Harmon, shared while sitting in the living room of her home. The urn is a fitting tribute to her son, decorated with a smiling photo of Alan as he holds two bottles of alcohol. “That’s where he sits.”
Alan was shot four doors away from his parents’ house by a lifelong friend. The same person who hung around the Harmon family’s home and urged Alan not to associate with bad influences took the 34-year-old’s life. He was shot on Sept. 29, 2018 in Southwest Philadelphia and died the following day, September 30, 2018.
“I always thought he would be safe up here, I never thought he would be killed here,” Lisa said. “I would never, ever imagine that he’d be killed by someone he grew up with, someone who has been in my home.”
The day he was shot, Alan’s father, LaRue, heard the three gunshots while working from home. Neither him nor his wife knew their son was visiting their neighborhood the day he was shot.
“To watch your son literally dying before you and there’s nothing you can do is a horrible, horrible thing,” Lisa shared while fighting back tears. “I know from working in a trauma bay that you’re not supposed to touch a gunshot victim. I didn’t because I kept saying, ‘He’ll come alive, he will. Let him get to the hospital, let him get there, and he will be okay…’”
“My thought was that I would shift a bullet and kill him,” Lisa continued. “I didn’t get to hold him and he was dying in front of me. Then I said, if [I held him] and he still died, I would have been saying, ‘I shouldn’t have picked him up, I shouldn’t have touched him.’ I fight with that a lot.”
While Alan did not always have a clear path in life, he was working through the challenges and trying to be the best he could be — always with a smile on his face.
“I am proud of Alan. He came a long way,” LaRue said. “He had issues, he did… In the last few years, he overcame those issues and I was so proud of him.”
Grilling was always a favorite pastime of LaRue, and recently, Alan had learned from his dad.
“He was really proud of that,” LaRue shared. “He’d show me the pictures [of the food] and he invited us over… I really wanted to go because he was so proud.”
Alan loved to cook and worked at a catering company in Conshohocken. The money he earned, he used to give his four children whatever he could. At the time of his death, he was saving money to purchase iPhones for his kids.
“He enjoyed music, enjoyed laughter and loved being around his family, especially his children,” his brother, William, said. “One of his greatest, saddest things about his life was that he didn’t get to see [his children] as much as he wanted to.”
When his kids were little, he enjoyed taking them to the library. Alan wanted to help out however he could and would even visit them just to pitch in and wash their laundry.
“He was a good dad,” Lisa expressed. “Alan did things that I never thought that my son would do, and that showed me how much of a good father he was.”
While Alan and his brother Donte were not always close in their adult lives, they would still be there for each other whenever they needed someone to lean on. “I’ve been through a lot and [Alan] would always call me to say, ‘Everything will be okay,’” Donte said.
Alan’s signature smile, larger-than-life personality and his love of partying have made a mark on the lives of everyone he encountered.
“Everyone loved that smile, no matter where he went, no matter where he’d go, he’d smile,” Lisa remembered.
Alan is survived by his mother, father, four brothers and four children.
