In July 2022, Rebekah’s 14-year-old son, William, was hit and killed in a crosswalk on East Parkway. Out of that loss, she and her husband built William’s Walk. Her father-in-law gave it the name. “It was founded as a way to remember and honor him,” she says, “but we also know that it’s so much bigger than him.” Of William, she says simply, “He loved everybody.”

When they looked into the numbers, what they found pushed them forward: Memphis had ranked as the least safe city in the country for pedestrians several years running, and no active organization was taking it on. “Memphis was designed for cars,” Rebekah says. William’s Walk is working to change that, street by street.

One of its core programs is Steps to Steering. With Memphis Shelby County Schools no longer offering driver’s education, William’s Walk partnered with the district and Maxwell Driving School to offer income-based scholarships. More than a dozen students have applied, and the first has already finished, with a thank-you note from her mom. “Safer drivers, getting them safer younger, makes for safer pedestrians,” Rebekah says.

The push on the streets themselves is working too. The intersection where William was hit was updated about six weeks after the crash, and grants are now fixing some of the city’s most dangerous crossings. Rebekah points to new crosswalks on Highland near the university and around Overton Park and Overton Square, with the next focus being the long stretches, sometimes a mile, with nowhere safe to cross. Her ten-year goal is a Memphis where income is never a barrier to driver’s ed, and a city study that adds crosswalks wherever the gaps run too long.

The community has shown up. Two William’s Walk events have each drawn a couple hundred people, with the mayor at both and city council members joining in. Partners include Innovate Memphis, Maxwell Driving School, and Street Fair, a group Rebekah describes as people who, like her, did not all grow up in Memphis but want to see great things happen here.

What stays with you is how she holds both things at once. “If you look deeper into Memphis and you see all of the good elements, it makes the bad elements a little easier to overlook. And I’m somebody who’s lost a child in Memphis to road violence. And I can still say that.”

Learn about Steps to Steering, donate, or apply for a student at williams-walk.com.