Richie Fletcher is telling the story of how he met Liza. He lights up. He puts the sadness aside, if only for a moment. He laughs.

“We were at the Hi-Tone,” he says. “It was a Wednesday night.”

Calkins: Once again — this time on 901 Day — Memphians will Finish Liza’s Run

Neither Richie nor Liza were the sort to be at the Hi-Tone — the music venue — on a Wednesday night. But on this particular Wednesday, they both happened to be there. They met through a mutual friend.

“I chatted her up,” Richie says. “Then I said I’d walk her to her car. When we got close to her car, I said, ‘OK, nice to meet you,’ and then she turns around and just sprints to her car. I mean, she sprints. I find out later, that’s just what she and her friends did. But I was like, ‘OK, so much for that.’”

Richie put aside any thought of wooing Liza. Some time later, he was asked to speak at a Sunday night service at Second Presbyterian Church.

“Before I spoke, I remember having the thought, ‘With what I’m about to say, the testimony that I am about to give, any thought of dating any girls who happen to be out there is going to go out the window.’”

Richie’s testimony was about his journey through addiction, about finding his way to sobriety and peace.

‘Eliza. It means joy.’ Hundreds gather to remember Eliza Fletcher

“After it was over, people were coming up and thanking me. I remember the last person there was Liza, waiting to say something to me.

“That is how it started. The rest is history.”

‘The biggest fan of Memphis’

Liza Fletcher was abducted and murdered on Sept. 2 of last year. So this week is the terrible anniversary.

Faced with that reality, faced with the coming onslaught of news coverage, Richie Fletcher reached out to a reporter for one simple reason.

“I want to talk about Liza,” he said. “Who she was.”

She was the 34-year-old mother of two young sons.

She was an extraordinary endurance athlete.

Hutchison retires Eliza Fletcher’s number — and unveils an annual award in her name

She was a junior kindergarten teacher at St. Mary’s Episcopal School who, while schools were closed during COVID, gathered her class over Zoom to sing “This Little Light of Mine.”

She was Richie’s best friend and partner.

She was a believer in Memphis — and in the good in everyone.

“She was the biggest fan of Memphis,” said Richie, now 40. “She moved back here from Nashville to work at Promise Academy. She didn’t have to do that; it wasn’t a part of a teacher-training program. She wanted to help the kids. We would have late-night talks about Memphis. We could have been far away, without any worries in the world. I was always like, ‘We need to get out of here.’ But she didn’t want to leave.”

The night before she was taken, Liza and Richie watched the U.S Open tennis tournament together.

Calkins: With hope and defiance, thousands finished Eliza Fletcher’s run

“We were hanging out on the couch, cutting up,” Richie said. “She would typically go to bed before me, and I would stay up because she got up early. I remember, that night, going up there for whatever reason and just giving her a big ol’ hug and kiss on her cheek. She was kind of falling asleep, so she didn’t necessarily like it. She asked me that night if I wanted to ride my bike in the morning and she would run on the treadmill.”

Richie had to stop, while telling this part of the story. As he later put it, “there are a lot of what-ifs.”

What if Richie had taken Liza up on her offer? What if she had stayed in that morning to run on the treadmill? What if the couple had found a house in Germantown, where they had been looking the previous summer? 

Yeah, there are a lot of what-ifs.

“When I woke up, the house was just silent,” Richie said. “Typically, she’d have been taking a shower. I knew then something was f’ed up. From there, it became my own personal hell.”

That hell included being accused of complicity in his wife’s disappearance — both by strangers on social media and by law enforcement.

DA to seek death penalty for Cleotha Henderson

“I’m Downtown, and they’re drilling me and trying to have me admit that I was involved,” Richie said. “And all I’m wanting to do is go search for my wife. I knew what was coming. We used to listen to the crime podcasts. The only reason I was there was because of the statistics that say the husband is the guy who did it. 

“But what got me was when they said, ‘This doesn’t just happen.’ I’m like, ‘This doesn’t just happen? We live in Memphis. There was the guy who was killed leaving the St. Jude fundraiser (Glenn Cofield). The kid at Rhodes who was killed (Drew Rainer).’ I get angry sometimes, thinking about it. The only reason I was able to stay sane was because of all the people I knew who were out there, in military fashion, searching for my wife.”

Cleotha Henderson, aka Cleotha Abston, was subsequently charged in the murder. On July 6 of this year, Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy announced his office would seek the death penalty in the case. Richie hasn’t attended any of Henderson’s court appearances.

“I would probably want to jump over the wall and want to hold that guy’s neck,” he said. “But then there is a part of me that says, if I had the life he led, maybe I’d be in the same situation. I’ve been there. I’ve had rough cards. But we all have choices at the end. That’s the point of free will. You have to make that choice and then you have to deal with the consequences. There has to be consequences. People need to be accountable. Not just the people who commit the crimes. The government has to be accountable, too.”

Richie has thought a lot about this, over the course of the year, amid the shock and grief. He has his hands full as the single father of two young sons, now 6 and 7. He recently started pursuing a degree in social work with the idea of becoming a therapist.

But he thinks a lot about Memphis, about the city his wife believed in and loved.

Conaway: Pauses in the flow, a city’s tragic losses

“She would be the first to forgive,” he said. “That’s who she was. I guess I have this feeling that something positive has to happen from this.”

“I don’t want the good that has already happened to be lost. I don’t want the good that could happen to be lost. ... I keep thinking it has to be a spark. To spark change in the city. What does that look like? I don’t know.”

Richie plans to ride his bike early Friday morning to watch Memphians gather, once again, to Finish Liza’s Run. He isn’t certain how long he will linger. He is still reluctant to go out in public; it sometimes feels as if everyone is looking at him.

“One time, I was (at a restaurant) eating dinner with my kids,” he said. “I went to the bathroom and came back, and someone had paid for our meal. Well, that was hard. Everyone is just trying to help where they can. But we just want to be a normal family.”

Richie can’t quite believe he was lucky enough to meet and marry Liza in the first place. He considers it a small miracle. And now that she is gone, he is determined that their story — and that Liza’s exuberant, loving presence in the world — not be reduced to the story of her death.

Fletcher’s loss in education, faith communities ripples across city

Liza may have become a symbol, but she was more than a symbol. She was a mother, a teacher, an athlete and a wife. She was that person who heard Richie’s testimony and waited to talk to him after it was over. She was that fierce believer in the good in everyone.

“If she had died of a heart attack, we all would have gathered to celebrate all those things that were so wonderful about her,” Richie said. “I don’t want that to be lost. I want my sons to know that about their mother, the amazing person she was.”

So after the interview ended, Richie sent a series of photos and texts. One was about how much Liza loved being a boy mom. Another was a note she had posted on social media one Mother’s Day that said, among things, “I want to be a mom that is a safe place for the boys to feel, be themselves and fail while learning.” Indeed, all the texts were about Liza — not what happened to her, but who she was, what she believed in and how she lived.

“That’s what I want to shine a light on,” he said. “The positive person she was. It feels like there is a lot of hopelessness out there right now. Liza always had hope.”