In memoriam: MOVE survivor Michael Moses Ward
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Most people wouldn’t recognize Michael Moses Ward if they passed him on the street. When he was thrust into the spotlight nearly 30 years ago, his face was that of an undersized 13-year-old called Birdie Africa. He was the only child to survive the 1985 firebombing of his home by the city, which killed his mother, five other adults and five children and reduced a swath of West Philadelphia to ashes. The radical black-liberation group MOVE was cult-like and full of contradictions: They espoused peace, back-to-nature ideals and veganism, but also screamed over a bullhorn all night and hoarded weapons that were eventually used in a shootout with police. For most of his life, Ward kept out of the discussion, changing his name and trying to lead a quiet, suburban life. In a rare interview with the Inquirer 10 years after the bombing, he said he was still afraid of MOVE. “They said it was a family, but a family isn’t something where you are forced to stay when you don’t want to. And none of us wanted to stay, none of the kids. We were always planning ways to run away, but we were too little.”
On Sept. 27, Ward, 41, drowned in a hot tub while on a family vacation on a Carnival cruise. The setting, one MOVE would have despised, exemplifies the suburban life Ward led — so normal that it could be seen as a deliberate escape from the past. But in the end, all his obituaries came back to the house on Osage Avenue he never could quite escape.
