The Making of You with Deante Young S2 E1 (Find the End of the Line and Get in It)

In this episode of The Making of You with Deante Young, Deante sits down with Dr. Yvonne Pointer to uncover the experiences, relationships and convictions that formed a woman whose life became defined by faith, service and an unwillingness to quit.

Yvonne grew up as one of ten children in Cleveland, surrounded by family traditions, neighborhood accountability and parents whose words stayed with her for decades. 

Her mother taught her that there was good in everybody. Her father taught his children to work, take responsibility and pay their bills. But some of the words Yvonne heard as a child also created insecurities she admits she still has to fight today.

As a young girl, she was an avid reader who imagined a world far beyond her neighborhood. She became fascinated by figures such as Harriet Tubman and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., eventually seeing in them something that would become central to her own life: when something is wrong, waiting for somebody else to fix it may not be enough.

But Yvonne’s own path was far from straight.

Despite loving school, she says she began diminishing herself in order to be accepted by other teenagers. She started cutting class, drinking, smoking marijuana and doing things she admits she never really wanted to do. 

At 16, she became pregnant with her daughter Gloria and was removed from traditional high school, eventually continuing her education through an adult education program while her parents helped her raise her child.

Then came December 6, 1984.

Fourteen-year-old Gloria left home for school, where she was supposed to receive a perfect-attendance award. She never arrived. Later that morning, Yvonne learned that her daughter had been raped and murdered. 

What followed was not simply grief. Yvonne began to see what happened to Gloria as an injustice, and that distinction changed the direction of her life.

In this conversation, Yvonne explains how pain became purpose, why she believes tragedy can become ministry, and how she eventually realized that the people waiting for someone to come solve the problem may themselves be the answer.

That belief led to decades of advocacy, the creation of Positive Plus, violence-prevention work, service to families and children, work in Ghana and a life increasingly centered on helping people move through circumstances that could otherwise consume them.

She also reveals the people who helped build her along the way, including Harriet Tubman, Margot Copeland, Dr. Gwendolyn Goldsby Grant and Cleveland Councilwoman Fannie Lewis. It was Lewis who gave Yvonne a 

piece of advice that became one of the defining lessons of her life:

“Find the end of the line and get in it.”

Instead of waiting for someone to hand her an opportunity to serve, Yvonne began volunteering, showing up and helping wherever she could. Little by little, she says she moved from standing outside the room to eventually being seated at the table.

The episode also reaches one of the most extraordinary intersections of Yvonne’s life. When Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were rescued in Cleveland in 2013, Yvonne was asked to sit beside Knight because no family member was there to receive her. 

Holding her hand, Yvonne thought about what she would have given for someone to have been beside Gloria in her final moments. The two women eventually began singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” together in the hospital.

Then, after 29 years of searching, Yvonne finally came face-to-face with the man who murdered her daughter.

She did not go to death row seeking revenge. 

She went hoping to understand what might prevent another child from suffering the same fate—and to tell him she forgave him. Yvonne explains why holding onto hatred would only continue diminishing her own life: he had already taken enough from her.

This episode is about far more than surviving tragedy.

It is about the words that stay with us, the people who redirect us, the pain that can become purpose, the faith required to keep moving and the decision to use what happened to you in service of somebody else.

And when asked what she wants her enduring legacy to be, Yvonne’s answer is simple:

She did not quit.