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Denise Washington and Marcus Washington III

Denise Washington and Marcus Levi Washington III were grandmother and grandson. Denise had lived with Marcus since his birth in the Washington Family Home and became one of his primary caregivers after Diana Rochelle Washington died in 2010. Marcus used both Ma, continuing the kinship name his father used, and Gram for her.

Overview

Denise was a daily household presence throughout Marcus’s childhood. She attended his school events and basketball games, fed him, and participated in the family routines that surrounded his education and athletics. After Diana’s death and Marcus Levi Washington II’s withdrawal into grief and alcohol use, Denise and Marcus Levi Washington I assumed most of the thirteen-year-old’s active care without removing him from the home he shared with his father. Denise continued checking on Marcus II while providing the parenting he could not manage consistently and did not shame him for needing her to step forward.

Marcus and Denise were both loud, warm, expressive, and inclined to draw other people into a group. Denise cheered from the stands and spoke easily to strangers about her grandson’s basketball career. Marcus filled rooms through talk, humor, and movement. His energy strongly resembled Diana’s, while his ready inclusion of quieter children also continued a pattern he had grown up with in both his mother and grandmother.

Origins and Early Relationship

Marcus was born on January 21, 1997, as the only child of Marcus II and Diana. His parents already lived with Denise and Pop, so his relationship with his grandparents developed through shared daily life rather than visits between separate households. Denise watched Diana coach him in the driveway, bring him to organized basketball, and attend his games from the third row at center court.

Denise recognized familiar elements of her own parenting in Diana’s talkativeness, active inclusion, and refusal to let Marcus feel alone. She also understood that Diana’s vigilance around her son had been shaped by the deaths in the Russell family. Denise provided steadiness within the same house while respecting Diana’s role as Marcus’s mother.

Diana died from triple-negative breast cancer in 2010, when Marcus was thirteen. Denise’s own grief did not interrupt the practical care Marcus needed. She and Pop became his functional parents within the multigenerational household while Marcus II remained present but less able to parent reliably. Denise’s care included meals, school participation, athletic events, and continued connection to the wider family.

Dynamics and Communication

Marcus used both Ma and Gram for Denise. Ma linked his place as her grandson with the household vocabulary he had inherited from his father, while Gram also appeared in his own understanding of their grandparent-grandchild bond. Denise’s full, warm voice, emphatic gestures, humor, and physical affection made her attention difficult to miss. Marcus communicated with comparable volume and expressiveness, although grief sometimes made him unusually quiet.

Denise followed Marcus’s basketball development closely. She occupied the third row with Pop, cheered at full volume, and told strangers about his career. She also noticed details he might have tried to hide, including the signs of his emotional hand tremor, and later remembered his crooked graduation cap. During his University of Maryland recruitment, she evaluated whether the program would protect his education and treat him as a whole person rather than only as a player.

Denise’s active parenting did not change her insistence that Diana remained her daughter or the family’s preservation of Diana’s place. She understood Marcus’s resemblance to his mother in his face, laugh, warmth, and style of grieving. Their household supported his continuing relationship with Diana through her recipes, possessions, stories, basketball teaching, and the family members who remembered her with him.

Shared History and Milestones

December 2014: UMD Scout Game

Main article: UMD Scout Game (December 2014) - Event

Denise and Pop took their usual third-row seats when a University of Maryland assistant coach came to evaluate Marcus during his senior season. Keisha Clark, whom Marcus had recently begun dating, arrived separately in a purple coat and unknowingly sat between them in the center-court seat Diana had used. Denise recognized Keisha’s name from Marcus’s passing references, introduced herself and Pop, and welcomed her into the family group within minutes.

When Keisha learned whose seat she occupied and offered to move, Denise told her to stay. Diana had guided Keisha into the long-empty seat; Denise did not witness the unseen guidance but understood the purple coat and Keisha’s arrival as providence. Marcus saw Keisha laughing with his grandparents while he played, making their acceptance of her part of an evening already shaped by his mother’s absence and his father’s first move out of the back rows.

Denise also treated Marcus’s recruitment anxiety as something he was prepared to meet. Before the game, she told Keisha that he had been ready since he was ten and needed to get out of his own head. She remained on her feet cheering as West Baltimore won by twenty-seven points and the Maryland coach invited Marcus for a campus visit.

March 2015: Scholarship Home Visit

Main article: UMD Home Visit (Late March 2015) - Event

Denise began preparing the Washington home at five-thirty in the morning before Maryland’s coaches arrived. She cleaned the house, arranged unfamiliar throw pillows, and set out a glass bowl of mints. She kept the uneaten mints in the pantry for three years after the visit.

During the scholarship presentation, Denise asked how the program would keep basketball from displacing Marcus’s education. She had researched the risk of college athletes leaving with recognition for their play but no useful academic foundation. The coaches answered with details about academic advising, tutors, study halls, grade tracking, and consequences for poor academic performance. Denise accepted their answer after hearing those specifics.

Marcus verbally accepted a full athletic scholarship. Denise thanked the coaches for seeing her grandson rather than limiting their interest to his usefulness on the court. She also witnessed Marcus II step closer to his son before and during the meeting, speak publicly about Diana’s role in building Marcus’s game, and remain for dinner afterward. The day joined Marcus’s academic and athletic future with the family’s first sustained experience of Marcus II returning to active fatherhood.

June 2015: High School Graduation

Main article: West Baltimore High School Graduation (June 2015) - Event

At Marcus’s graduation, Denise wore a purple dress and hat and cheered from the third row. When the school announced his Maryland scholarship, she screamed while Pop stood beside her and Marcus II watched from the family section rather than the back rows. Denise later managed the crowd of well-wishers surrounding Marcus in the parking lot, using her experience with church receptions to clear a path when heat, exertion, and lack of food had left him physically depleted.

Denise returned home to a roast she had left cooking, served dinner on the family’s good plates, and carved it on Diana’s chipped white platter. Before dinner, she cried privately beside Pop for Diana’s absence, their grandson’s achievement, and their son’s effort to return. Marcus II joined the table with water instead of Jameson. Denise’s grace included the people absent from the table, preserving Diana’s place in the family celebration while feeding the people who had been able to attend.

Keisha and Later Family Life

Denise’s welcome at the scout game began Keisha’s incorporation into the Washington family. Her response did not depend on a formal introduction from Marcus or an established future role for Keisha. By the home visit, Keisha sat beside Marcus with research on his academic program and was treated as part of the family gathering. She later called Denise “Gram.”

Marcus and Keisha completed their undergraduate degrees in 2019 and married that spring before Marcus entered the NBA draft. His selection by the Washington Wizards kept him near Denise, the West Baltimore home, and the rest of his family. Their daughter, Rochelle Washington, was born in 2020, making Denise her paternal great-grandmother. Marcus and Keisha later lived in the Washington metropolitan area while maintaining close ties to the family home where Denise had helped raise him.

Relationships Family Relationships Grandparent-Grandchild Relationships Denise Washington Marcus Washington III Washington Family