As a society, we memorialize what we have lost. A dead person cannot be replaced, but can be honored and remembered.

At The Enterprise, we have seen this time and time again in the towns that we cover. When someone dies, say in a car crash, a roadside memorial will spring up. Flowers and mementos are placed at the site. If it’s a child who has died, often teddy bears or balloons are added.

Sometimes, there is a more formal fund drive with a more permanent memorial, like the angel statue in Altamont, placed to memorialize two teens who died in a 2000 crash on Hurst Road.

Often, a scholarship is set up as after the murder of the Chen family in Guilderland in 2014.  The Anthony and Eddy Chen Memorial Scholarship was created to memorialize the two Guilderland Elementary students who loved gardening and is given each year to a graduating Guilderland High School senior going into any field of study related to the environment.

As a community newspaper, we cover these tragedies as they unfold and we also cover the groups that form afterward and the memorials they build. Usually, it is a healing process — a way to create good out of something bad, a way to help families who are bereft in their loss.

So we were startled last week to get a letter to the editor, signed by Cheyanne and Christine Dunn and their adoptive mother, Linda Dunn. The girls and their brother, Kenneth White, Cheyanne’s twin, had lived with their aunt in a trailer in Knox.

In 2014, when Kenneth was 5 and a kindergartner at Berne-Knox-Westerlo, he was killed by his cousin, Tiffany VanAlstyne, who also lived in the trailer and was charged with looking after him on the day he was killed. During the court sessions we attended after the murder, we learned his sisters had been abused, too.

The girls were placed in foster care with Linda Dunn who lived in Guilderland Center. At the time of Kenneth’s murder, Dunn has been an emergency foster-care parent for over eight years, usually taking in children for weeks or months as needed. Her role often required being ready at a moment’s notice to care for a child.

When she adopted Kenneth’s sisters, she recalled for us times when she had to buy bottles and diapers in the middle of the night to care for an infant, and it was a similar situation when she was given custody of Christine and Cheyanne in December 2014.

“They called me that night and asked me to take the girls, and of course I wasn’t going to turn them down,” Dunn said at the time. “I remember that night like it was yesterday.”

It was expected that Christine and Cheyanne would eventually be placed with their biological mother. But, after court hearings, that is not what happened.

Dunn herself testified at those hearings. In 2015, she said in Family Court that one of Kenneth’s sisters reported the other was beaten with a baseball bat by their cousin Tiffany VanAlstyne. The reports of abuse were echoed in testimony by the family’s caseworker.

“Christine had bruises from her cheek pretty much covering her entire body, right down to the bottom of her legs,” Dunn testified.

Dunn told us that, as the years went by, it was a natural progression to adopt the sisters.

“I fell in love with the girls,” she said.

In 2019, the adoption was finalized in Albany Family Court. Christine wore a pale pink dress with a flower in her hair, and Cheyanne wore a blue blouse, white capris, and canvas sneakers. Dunn said someone had asked what had happened to Cheyanne’s dress.

“And I said, ‘Because, that’s not Cheyanne.’ We want Cheyanne to be who she is,” she said.

The sisters are “night and day,” said Dunn at the time. Christine is a “princess” who loves to dress up, while Cheyanne is a tomboy. While Christine had her room decorated with Disney’s Tinkerbell, Cheyanne had hers decorated with Disney’s “Cars.”

The adoption event at court was thronged with politicians and media. But, despite living in the shadow of a tragedy that became a media sensation, Dunn said at the time that she tried to shield the girls from it. For some time she kept any sort of media about the murder out of the house, she said.

“They’re still affected by it,” she said in 2019 of the trauma the sisters experienced. “They probably won’t be, really, all better for a long time.”

So we were sympathetic last week when we read the letter that Christine, Cheyanne, and Linda Dunn had sent us from Clermont, Florida where the family lives now.

They wrote to publicly request that “Kenneth’s Army” — a not-for-profit group that had formed in the wake of Kenneth White’s murder — rename itself and stop using Kenneth’s name and likeness in its fundraising and publicity efforts.

Our Hilltown reporter, Noah Zweifel, spoke to a founder of Kenneth’s Army, Claire Ansbro-Ingalls. She answered, point for point, the objections the Dunns had raised in their letter.

The Dunns wrote they had thought part of the “mission” of Kenneth’s Army was to support Kenneth’s sisters but wrote “there has been no guidance, love, or support.”

Rather, they described hurt caused as the sisters waited for a promised livestream of Kenneth’s Run that never materialized and further when a contribution was made to Kenneth’s Army so the girls could fly north to be on hand for the June 4 dedication of a park road and park bench in Berne, memorializing Kenneth White, but no arrangements were made for their journey.

Ansbro-Ingalls responded that the flight would be a liability and that the promised livestream hadn’t happened because someone was sick.

Further, she said she doesn’t think Dunn has any control over Kenneth’s name.

“There’s no reason to change the name,” she said of Kenneth’s Army. “We do not use ‘Kenneth White’ as our motto, it’s Kenneth’s Army Champions for Children. That’s the name of our organization … If it bothers the girls, according to Mrs. Dunn, then she does not have to go on the Kenneth’s Army page.”

Linda Dunn noted, “I can keep them away from social media at home but any parent with 11- and 12-year-old children knows that it’s impossible outside the home.”

Insbro-Ingalls went on, “The mission of Kenneth’s Army was justice for Kenneth and safety for his sisters. His sisters are safe, so we have no financial obligations to them whatsoever.”

Yes, Kenneth’s sisters are safe — in the care of Linda Dunn. And, as their mother, she is trying to protect them from hurt, and psychological harm.

The girls’ therapist, the Dunns wrote in their letter, has said it would be “in their best interest that Kenneth’s Army discontinue the use of pictures and the name of Kenneth White in association with their organization.”

At the June 4 ceremony in Berne, after the Dunns’ letter was published, Kenneth’s picture was on display in a glass case with Spider-Man action figures. The week Kenneth was murdered, his biological mother gave us this message about her 5-year-old boy who loved the superhero Spider-Man: “Let everyone know that Spider-Man is looking down on them.”

Also at Saturday’s event, Kenneth’s name was emblazoned on motorcycle vests worn by many of the participants, including Ansbro-Ingalls and Berne Councilwoman Anita Clayton. 

Berne’s supervisor, Dennis Palow, had this to say in his speech, “The Altamont Enterprise writes stories about things that happen in our town, but not the good things. Look around. Is The Altamont Enterprise there today? No, they’re not there. They should be there taking pictures today and write the good story that the town of Berne is doing for our children.”

Zweifel of course was there on Saturday; he took pictures and wrote a story about the event just as the week before Enterprise photographer Michael Koff had been in the same park, covering the unveiling of Berne’s new World War II monument.

The Enterprise has followed Kenneth White’s story since his murder, covering vigils and motorcycle runs along with court hearings, interviews with Kenneth’s biological parents, and the adoption procedure for his sisters.

We only wish we had written about the abuse before it killed Kenneth. We simply did not know. Sometimes the best a newspaper can do is reflect what happens, not prevent it.

We do know now, though, directly from Kenneth’s sisters, that the use of his name and picture by Kenneth’s Army is hurting them. Bruises on the psyche aren’t visible like bruises on a body but they are just as real — and perhaps more harmful.

“Use of the tragedy of Kenny’s death for publicity and fundraising only serves as a constant reminder to the girls of the trauma and tragedy they experienced,” the Dunns wrote.

The Dunns suggested Kenneth’s Army could continue its work under a different name like “Champions for Children” or “Children’s Army” and “still continue their goals regarding child abuse without profiting off the White family’s tragedy.”

Linda Dunn stressed to us that her concern is less about the money than the psychological toll the use of Kenneth’s name is taking on the girls, and the people who donate money to the group assuming that it is being used to support Kenneth’s siblings.

She has moved her family to Florida where, she reports, the girls are doing well in school. “They’re doing much better than they were in New York, where they had a hard time with people labeling them as ‘those children.’ So they’re doing much better that way.”

Ansboro-Ingalls may be correct that the Dunns have no legal control over Kenneth’s name but, if her group was formed in part to help Cheyanne and Christine, shouldn’t it comply with their request to change its name? Why would the group want to inflict more pain on girls who have already endured so much?

On cutting her family’s ties from Kenneth’s Army, Linda Dunn said, “The girls have every right to wish that.”

We urge those who care about Cheyanne and Christine to make their wish come true.