Sometimes they called him Mr. Elmo, other times Mr. A. But it was because they were preschool kids, and even though they had trouble saying their teacher’s name, they loved him.
Ammron Hargrove started teaching preschool around 2012, said his sister, Porscheca Wright. She was surprised he went into it, but she wasn’t surprised that he was good at it. And he loved it too.
“You wouldn’t expect this big, 6-foot-2 guy with all these tattoos to be preschool teacher but hey, he liked it,” Porscheca said with a laugh.
Ammon was always laughing too, which maybe was why the job suited him so much. “He liked to be funny and having fun cracking jokes,” she said. “It kept his spirit alive being a preschool teacher.”
Ammron’s first jobs were at different day cares, and his last job in Philly was at Methodist Education Services at Fowles Road. Life was good. He had two sons, Jihad and Messiah, and was engaged to be married to Shonnie Payne.
The two had met 7 or 8 years before in South Carolina when he went south to take classes in early childhood education. Shonnie was diagnosed with a severe case of lupus, and Ammron didn’t hesitate to help care for her. The two were living in North Carolina, where Shonnie’s mom was living.
He used to brag about how good life was down there, said another sister, Caprice Wright.
Then Ammron came back to Philly to visit after a friend’s passing, and tragedy struck on Oct, 8, 2020. in the wrong place at the wrong time, Ammron was shot multiple times outside a convenience store on Frankford Avenue near Harrison Street in Frankford. He was 29. He wasn’t the only family member who is gone. His sister, Latoya Wright, also was murdered a year later. Shonnie also passed the same year.
Ammron grew up in Frankford and North Philly, part of a big, boisterous family whose house everyone wanted to be at. He was on the quieter side as a kid, but he came out of his shell around middle school and made lots of friends, which was obvious to anyone who went to his funeral.
But growing up as the only boy surrounded by sisters, he got away with anything, Porscheca said, with a little playful jealousy in her voice. “He’d get a new pair of Jordans every week and had a ton of nice coats. Mom would give him toys whenever wanted.”
He had several Nintendos (he still liked to play 007 as an adult), and was even allowed to get his first tattoo when he was 13. “I couldn’t get a tattoo at 13,” Porscheca said as if he were sitting right next to her teasing him.
After graduating from Frankford High, he moved to South Carolina and took some early childhood education classes at at Denmark Tech to get his certificate to work with kids.
He stayed active in sports, but was diagnosed with scoliosis, so that put an end to football. But he kept up with basketball going to different courts around the city to play, said Caprice, who was the closest to him in the family because she was only two years older.
But his kids were his life, and living away from one of them tore him apart. So he would dive back and forth constantly to make sure he spent time with his older son in Philly. “He loved, loved, loved those kids,” Caprice said.
“He was so sweet and kind,” she said. “He really was a gentle giant.”
Even years after Ammron passed, people from the Methodist preschool kept checking on the family, a sign of how much they loved him there.
Somehow he always got his sisters to cook for him, said Porscheca, who he called Porkchop. He loved her salmon and broccoli cheesesteak—don’t knock it until you try it.
“He would give this look, and then I’d say, OK, I guess I’ll make it.” Then she would make this big man a second one.
He couldn’t cook anyway and had pretty simple tastes for the most part. At home he was a sandwich guy—honey turkey and cheese—but going out to eat he’d always order chicken fingers.
“Everywhere we go he was the chicken guy,” she said. “I go, ‘We at olive garden you can’t have that!”
But he made up for it because he was such a silly guy with his family, and that’s what Porscheca thinks about, as well as Latoya.
“f feel like talking about them, it makes me more at east with their passing,” she said. “I try to talk about both of them as much as I can. It’s good, so I continue to heal from it.”
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