Devine calloway biography

Divine Calloway and Jess Kszos may not have crossed paths if not for basketball.

In fact, they have never met. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

Calloway was an year-old Black scholar, a standout athlete and a recent graduate of Wilson Magnet High School when he was shot and killed in August, becoming a young victim of Rochester’s gun violence epidemic.

Kzsos was a rising senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology at the time, studying photojournalism. She spent her weekends and evenings photographing Rochester’s basketball community, from pick-up games at Cobbs Hill to the real deal inside city school gymnasiums. She considered that community family.

So, when friends inside those basketball circles started posting Facebook tributes to Calloway ― No. 3 at Wilson ― shortly after his death, Kzsos couldn’t help but mourn alongside them for someone she had never met.

“I wanted to know who we had lost,” she said in a recent interview.

Who was Divine Calloway?

Kszos spent the last year getting to know Divine Calloway through those who loved him the most. She spent hours with his family at intimate Sunday dinners and tracked his former basketball team’s sour season, blistering defeat and Calloway’s jersey on the bench — a permanent reminder of his absence.

Through it all, she captured a minute documentary that Kszos said turned into a story about a community navigating loss and “somehow, someway continuing on.”

The Democrat and Chronicle is publishing Kszos’ documentary to help amplify the stories of those touched by gun violence in Rochester.

“There’s this day-to-day trauma, and it’s just passed over and we don’t find out who we lost or even whose lives were impacted by this,” Kszos said. “What’s going on in our community?”

Recent grad killed in Rochester summer violence

Wilson basketball coaches Victor Norflee and PV Norflee, a father-son duo, described Calloway as the "ideal" student-athlete.

Calloway was an honor roll student who'd excuse himself from practice to study, they said. As a basketball captain, he ran practices without the coaches and properly scouted opponents' tendencies. Calloway also played football.

He was working at McDonald's on Lake Avenue and had plans of enrolling in trade school at the time of his death.

Calloway recently graduated high school when he was killed by another teenager during an argument in Marketview Heights. PV Norflee said Calloway could've done anything he set his mind to, and wanted to make his father proud.

"Divine was just a good kid all around. It's tragic that this happened to him. He didn't deserve it. He has a great heart and comes from a great family. We all wish that night could be replayed over," Norflee said.

He initially met Calloway as his sixth-grade teacher at Austin Steward Elementary School No. 46 in , then met again at Wilson.

Participating in the documentary was a "no brainer," Norflee said. Kszos approached PV Norflee at Calloway's funeral in August. Months later, Calloway's family, friends and teammates crowded into an auditorium at RIT to watch the film for the first time.

Norflee said he was awed by the togetherness and emotion viewers felt after watching the premiere. Everyone seemed to have had a personal relationship with Calloway.

"It's approaching a year now and it still feels so fresh," Norflee said. "We're still hurting as a community, and the city of Rochester is still mourning his death as well."

'Ballin for Stunna'

Victor Norflee, or Coach Flee, loved how the documentary showed how Calloway was far from a "thug" ― rather a good young man from a good family. Wilson basketball team's involvement with the documentary was important to their healing process, Coach Flee said.

"Especially in the Black community with young men, we don't express ourselves enough," he said.

Wilson chooses three captains each season: Coach Flee chooses one, his assistants picks another, and the players vote on a third. When Calloway was a senior, he was Coach Flee's personal choice for captain.

No one will wear Calloway's No. 3 again, the coach said.

In , Calloway's No. 3 jersey was placed on an empty seat on the bench for every game as Wilson dedicated the season to "Stunna."

The winter was tough. Wilson went and battled through lengthy losing streaks.

The losses hurt more since they wanted to win for Calloway, coach Flee said. Emotions poured when the Wildcats won their regular season finale over Honeoye Falls-Lima Michael Mitchell made a go-ahead 3-pointer with 54 seconds left. A Wilson player performed a postgame "prom-posal" with a bouquet of flowers and friends holding "P-R-O-M-?" posters.

All season, there was a greater lesson at play, though.

"Is that loss more important to you to get over than not coming home to the people that you love? That's some of the things we try to put into perspective," Coach Flee said.

Living with grief

Tata Lightle now bristles any time she reads the comments section underneath a news article about Rochester’s latest homicide. There is so much blame, she said, most of it pointed toward the victim: He deserved it. This is some type of karma.

She is reminded of Calloway, her cousin who was more like a brother. “I don’t want people to just look at him as somebody who just got killed,” Lightle said.

She said the documentary felt like a way to counter the judgment cast by strangers against homicide victims in Rochester.

“You can now see that he was a Black scholar,” she said. “He was working. He was a very good friend. He was an athlete. He just checked off every box. He was respectful, kind, driven, he had goals. He wasn’t just someone that was in the streets. It wasn’t nothing he deserved. It wasn’t nothing where karma came back at him. It was an unfortunate situation.”

Lightle said she hopes the documentary also offers more insight into the grief caused by gun violence. She worries most about Calloway’s teammates ― the trauma they’ve had to endure at such a young age and how it might impact their futures. The documentary helped keep the family connected to Calloway's former team. They showed up for several games and held each other through their grief.

Her family pulled together too, now hosting Sunday dinners at their grandparents' house, where reminders of Calloway are plentiful.

Lightle's own son, Pharoah, is just 5 years old and considered Calloway his big brother.

“We were like this,” he said in a recent interview, crossing two fingers tight. A life-size cutout of Calloway sits in the corner of their apartment. Lightle talks about him regularly.

“It’s easy to forget,” she said. “You feel guilty just going on with life after someone passes. But he was so much bigger than what happened to him. And I’m definitely going to make sure everyone knows that.”  

— Kayla Canne reports on community justice and safety efforts for the Democrat and Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @kaylacanneand @bykaylacanne on Instagram.Get in touch at kcanne@

— Marquel Slaughter is a journalist for the Democrat and Chronicle, specializing in high school sports. He has been a reporter for 15 years. Follow him @MarquelSports and X or on Instagram. You can contact him at mslaughter1@