True toll of violence in Boston

Few details of Johnson’s murder are known. His 24-year-old brother was wounded in the shooting near their father’s home. Police haven’t established any motive. But a good picture is emerging of Cory Johnson, and none of it points to a life that would end this way. More and more, it seems that simply drawing breath in the wrong ZIP code in Boston is all that it takes to become a murder victim.

Johnson’s friends and relatives say he led a proud and purposeful life grounded in good values and surrounded by loving family. He adored his two daughters, ages 6 and 4. He promoted concerts, a skill learned from an older cousin. He attended church regularly. Boston Police didn’t know him, which serves as a positive character reference around Roxbury. His mother, Debra Johnson-McIntosh, said her son loved fashion, color, and people. People loved him back, as evidenced by the more than 600 attendees at his funeral.

A lot can be learned from looking back into a murder victim’s life. Sometimes it reveals dangerous associations. In this case, though, it reveals so much of what is good about Boston. For every person pointing a gun, there are scores extending their hand to help.

One of those hands belongs to Frank Sullivan, a dispatcher for the Boston Fire Department. In 1979, Sullivan, then 24, was shot twice in the head after a late-night meal in Chinatown. The shooting robbed him of some of his sight, but it gave him extraordinary insight into the challenging lives of the city’s young people. For awhile, Sullivan contemplated the priesthood. He settled instead on devoting his Saturdays during the 1980s and ’90s to tutoring boys who wanted to live the right way even if they lived in the wrong neighborhood. Johnson, who attended St. Gregory School in Dorchester and graduated from Boston Latin Academy in 2000, was one of those boys.

It disturbs Sullivan that Johnson’s murder has received so little attention. He wonders if nothing short of the murder of a child can draw the public’s outrage. Sullivan warns people not to jump to conclusions about the adult victims of urban violence. After his own shooting, he struggled to convince people that it wasn’t somehow related to drugs or crime. Sullivan’s crime that night had been asking some unruly diners who were tossing food around the restaurant to control themselves.

The tutoring program where Cory Johnson and Sullivan connected was called Spes, the name of the Roman goddess of hope. A succession of Spes boys and their tutors bounced between church basements and community centers in Roxbury and Dorchester for about 15 years, until 2000. The tutors were top notch, like Steve Butler, now the director of information technology at Liberty Mutual. Many of the boys made good: Corey McCarthy, the dean of students at New Mission High; emergency medical technician Reggie Charles; State Street executive Wilson Erold; human resource specialist Patterson Seney; and NSTAR engineer Alex Clarke.

“They’re my friends,’’ said Sullivan. “They call me when their first child is born.’’

A year ago, several Spes graduates formed their own volunteer tutoring program, dubbing it Spero (Latin for “I hope’’). Their mission is to “provide students with a supportive environment similar to that which we were provided in our youth.’’ Tonight, they will host their first annual awards dinner for their own students at the Roslindale Community Center. Cory Johnson would have been the ideal promoter for the event.

Cory’s friends and family said he was image conscious, in a good way. If his daughters acted up, he’d chide them gently with the phrase, “That doesn’t look good on you.’’ One thing is certain. The murder of Cory Johnson doesn’t look good on Boston.

Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com.