November 22 is always a somber day for Carolyn Johnson-Turner

It is the date of the death of her son, Rodreckus, and each year it continues to hit the family hard.

But this year is even more surreal for Johnson-Turner.

“This year it really hits my heart differently because he lived for 20 years and he’s been dead for 20 years,” she said. “It’s unreal.”

In addition to missing her son, Johnson still doesn’t have the peace of knowing who killed Rodreckus, and why.

“I do still have hope,’’ Johnson-Turner said. “I just pray and hope, and I do feel like it will be one day solved.”

Rodreckus was at a birthday party on Maple Street in Powderly on Nov. 22, 2003, when he was shot and killed. The last thing he said to his mother was, “Ma, I will be back.”

He had attended the party with his younger brother, a cousin and two other friends. The party was being given for an 18-year- old girl.

Rodreckus had arrived at the party and was parking his vehicle, when shots rang out from a group of guys who had been in an earlier altercation.

One of the bullets from the gun pierced the windshield of Rodreckus’s vehicle and struck him in his head, killing him.

Rodreckus was working two jobs at the time of his death: at the City of Bessemer Street and Sanitation Department and the CVS Distribution Center. He had a 1-year-old son at the time of his death.

“He was a quite bashful and passive person,’’ Johnson-Turner has previously said. “He wanted to live a good life.”

Rodreckus had dreamed of getting married, having more children, and going to his mother’s house for Sunday dinner.

He lived in the Central Park neighborhood, where the City of Birmingham put up a memorial sign in his memory.

“Losing Rodreckus has changed my life. I feel like I live in the ‘Twilight Zone,’’’ Johnson-Turner said. “This is my life, but it doesn’t seem real without my child.”

“It devastated us,’’ she said.

In the year following his death, Johnson launched the Parents Against Violence Foundation, and has become a well-known anti-crime voice in Birmingham and beyond.

Johnson-Turner, who previously worked in the City of Birmingham Mayor’s Office and now works in the Birmingham City Clerk’s Office, has spent two decades fighting for the lives of other youth, educating and warning them about violence and the havoc it wreaks.

“I started that to help parents and families deal with grief and help these young people to understand about the consequences of gun violence and when you take someone’s life, you literally almost kill the family,’’ she said. “There are other ways to resolve a conflict without hurting someone.”

Johnson-Turner also works nationally with Voices of Black Mothers United.

“It is incumbent upon us as parents, leaders, and teachers to do everything we can to make a difference in the lives of your young people,’’ she said. “They need us, and we need them.”

“My son was an innocent victim who did nothing to cause his life to be taken that night,’’ she said. “He died all because someone was ignorant enough to pull out a gun and shot where a crowd of people were gathered tying to have a good time.”

“Those bullets could have killed more than just Rodreckus that night,’’ she said. “Thank God no one else got killed.”

She said Thanksgiving is always hard for the family since Rodreckus was killed a few days before the holiday.

“We couldn’t celebrate because he was laying in the morgue,’’ she said.

Rodreckus’s son is now 21 and has a 2-year-old son of his own.

“We’ve made sure to stay in his life and tell him about his dad,’’ Johnson-Turner said. “He’s just like Rodreckus.”

This Thanksgiving Day, family and friends will gather at Rodreckus’s gravesite at Highland Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Bessemer to honor is life and bring awareness that his case is still unsolved.

She’s hoping that time is on her side and those involved or those who know what happened will have a change of heart and come forward.

“Those kids were young,’’ she said. “And I’m sure now they’ve gotten older, and they have families of their own.”

Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham police at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.