The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers

by Sampson Davis

  Their shoes were ultra-fly, too. Al and Ant actually created fashion trends in our neighborhood because they wore the hottest styles before anybody else could afford them. I remember clearly they showed up with ninety-dollar Fila sneakers before we’d ever heard of them. You could count on Al and Ant to sport brand-new leather and sheepskin jackets as soon as the weather turned cold. I remember one winter day somebody pulled a shotgun on Al and coat-jacked him. Having everything they ever wanted brought these guys a lot of unwanted attention.

  As soon as they got their driver’s licenses, they found cars waiting for them in the driveway. Ant jumped right out of the box with an Infiniti, and Alan got a 300Z. It was incredible seeing my peers pushing rides like these as soon as they got their licenses. They had cars as nice as the hustlers and drug dealers in our neighborhood.

  But I could never hate on them. Al and Ant’s mother was sweet and invited me on family trips. Once, they took me with them to Atlanta, where I got to see Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memorial and the church he pastored. Also, their family had a vacation home in the Poconos and they took me there with them. They loved traveling and didn’t mind sharing their world with me.

  To me, Anthony and Al’s lifestyle was like a fairy tale. It didn’t resemble the economics of my single-mom-headed household at all. Hanging out with them taught me one clear-cut perk of having a full-time dad: added income for the family. Having a father in residence could be a definite asset in a lot of ways.

  THE FUNNY THING IS, if my dad and I had lived in the same city, I think we would have been tight. When we talk on the phone occasionally, it’s always friendly and warm. But 675 miles separated us—a distance my father didn’t bridge very often.

  In my early years, Dad used to come to his sister’s house in nearby Rahway, New Jersey, and we would spend some time together. During one visit when I was twelve or thirteen, he let me drive his used Cadillac around the block. It was my first time stepping on the accelerator of a car. I won’t forget it—that huge steering wheel looked like the wheel on a boat. “Wow, my dad’s pretty cool to let me do something like this,” I thought to myself.

  But as I got older, his visits became less frequent. He came north only for my graduations from high school, college, and dental school. Years would slip by, years when I struggled to maintain my focus in school while my mother worked two jobs to help pay my tuition and fees. Earning a dentistry degree so I could write those precious three letters, DMD—doctor of dental medicine—after my name was not easy.

  Although I didn’t have much of a relationship with Dad, I’m thankful I had the good fortune to become friends with two guys who bring out the best in me. Sampson Davis and Rameck Hunt became my sidekicks at University High. They were just like me—fun-loving, but they knew when to buckle down and get their schoolwork done. One fateful day during our senior year, we happened to get shooed into a room where a recruiter from Seton Hall University in nearby South Orange, New Jersey, was talking about the school’s new pre-medical/pre-dental program for minorities.

  The funny thing about it is we hadn’t really planned to be in that room that day. We actually tried to skip out of the presentation to play basketball. But a teacher caught us, shoved us into the library, and told us to take a seat. I’m convinced that God wanted us to hear that recruiter’s message.

  As we lounged in our seats at a back table, the female recruiter said something that grabbed my attention: Seton Hall’s Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus Program would provide assistance with all aspects of the college experience, from admissions to tuition. As the recruiter spoke, I could see my future becoming more certain than I’d ever dared to envision it. “This is it!” I thought to myself. As a young boy, I had declared that I wanted to grow up and be a dentist. Now, the perfect opportunity had presented itself, like a genie granting a wish.

  “Man, we could go to college for free,” I told Sam and Rameck. “Let’s do this together.”

  That was the day we made our pact. The three of us promised to apply to the program and stick together until we came out on the other end as doctors.

  When Sam, Rameck, and I were accepted in 1991 to the Seton Hall program, we knew that we had signed on for eight years of intense studying. Yet there was one thing we didn’t think we had to worry about: money. The program had been created to encourage minorities from disadvantaged backgrounds to go into the medical field, and it came with a promise of free tuition. But that promise wasn’t kept. While we were undergraduates at Seton Hall, the scholarship fund for our program was found to have been mismanaged. The university threw together a mix of grants, loans, and scholarships that paid in part for our undergraduate expenses, but we had to foot the rest of the bill.

  Just getting through college ended up costing us thousands, and our unpaid tuition and fee bills piled higher and higher every year. But my mom didn’t let that derail my dream. Her attitude was “Go for it, George. Just do your best. We’ll make a way.” And she did. She took a second job to help pay for my education. Her days became exhausting. She woke up before dawn to go to work at the insurance company. When she got off there at four P.M., she’d head over to her second job at Bell Atlantic to be ready to start at five. She usually got home after nine P.M.

  At both jobs, she served as a customer service representative, talking to people on the phone. Sometimes the callers were irate and it was Mom’s job to defuse them. She burned herself out solving other people’s problems for seventy hours a week. Her blood pressure shot up, she tired easily, and she had no life except for getting to work and back. After a few years, her exhaustion began to show. She would fall asleep whenever she slowed down, like during church or a hair appointment. One day she went out with her sisters and found herself too winded to keep up with their leisurely pace. Eventually she got so sick that she had to quit her night job. By then I was almost done with dental school, and we knew that we had made it to the top of the mountain.

  But more than once, Mom dipped into her retirement savings to help me out. Once when I called her for help, she quietly closed out her membership in an investment club, liquidating the stock she had proudly bought. I felt bad going to Mom when I needed money, but she never hesitated. “If I have it, you got it” was her philosophy.

  I remember one day during those lean times, I opened my mail and out fell a postcard from my father from Jamaica. I couldn’t believe it. Here Mom and I were scraping and stressing, and he was having a great time on a cruise. Years later, I decided that I had overreacted—after all, everybody’s entitled to a vacation—but for some reason that day, seeing that glossy postcard made me wonder: How could he afford a cruise and not help me out with school expenses? Even if he had spent years saving for the trip, why hadn’t he been disciplined enough to do the same thing and put some money aside for me?

  As a teenager, I wasn’t bitter about him not being around. I just figured that if he could be by my side, he would be. He must have a good reason for not showing up, I told myself.

  But as I grew older, those long-repressed feelings of resentment came pouring out. I couldn’t choke them back. On my own, I had managed to defy most of the statistics facing me: Growing up without a father tends to intensify a boy’s aggression, and it doubles the chance that a child will drop out of school.

  But not having my father in my life, I realized, had created one persistent problem that I couldn’t figure out how to conquer. Not having a father to encourage me, to give me unconditional support, seemed to have sapped me of the confidence I needed to take risks and approach new situations fearlessly. As a result, every step I took on the Seton Hall University campus was shaky.

  I felt bombarded from the first day that my mom and her mother dropped me off, just gazing at my new world of manicured lawns, tall buildings, and white kids everywhere. Though the school was just a few miles west of Quitman Street in Newark, it was totally different from the all-black, low-income community I had left behind. I felt out of place at Seton Hall, a
nd although I had Rameck and Sam with me, even their support didn’t help me overcome the feelings of inadequacy.

  How do I maneuver here? How do I integrate into this world? Everything caused anxiety for me, from registering for classes to figuring out the social scene and the campus racial dynamics. I couldn’t get over the fact that it seemed like the white students looked through me as if I didn’t exist. I would say, “Hi, how are you?” yet white kids would walk past without replying. That really confused me. Although I made many white friends who didn’t treat me that way, including my freshman roommate, I still felt I didn’t belong. I didn’t have the confidence to walk on campus acting as if I owned the place.

  Just opening the door of my dorm room every day meant I had to steel my nerves. I hated that feeling, yet I couldn’t figure out how to feel more comfortable. I felt adrift, trying to figure out a million mysteries. Why didn’t anybody warn me what to expect before I got here? Although I needed to focus on my classes, a hodgepodge of distractions came flying at me. In the past, I’d taken my cues from my friends and family, but all that seemed worthless now.

  I relied heavily on Sam and Rameck, who shared a room across the hall. We talked every night, studied together, and helped one another adjust to all the challenges being flung at us. When I needed to buy a car, for instance, Rameck went to the dealership and helped me through the hassles of bargaining and financing. I chose a used Volkswagen Jetta, and picked one with a manual transmission since it was cheaper than an automatic. The next day, Rameck stayed loyally at my side as I sputtered and stalled, trying to pick up the rhythm of driving a stick shift. With his help, I finally felt the thrill of driving my own car.

  I had my mind on money constantly. At times, I worried if I’d be able to afford to finish school. I let these kinds of pressures distract me, and things only seemed to worsen when I graduated from Seton Hall and headed off to the New Jersey Dental School. For one thing, I didn’t have Rameck and Sam by my side anymore. They had already branched off to start medical school early. The pressures of dental school seemed overwhelming. For one thing, the bills were higher. I already owed $50,000 in school loans, and dental school was shaping up to cost double that amount. There were a couple of times when I buried my head in my hands, just worn down by the whole ordeal. The classes were painfully difficult, I was racking up thousands of dollars in debt, and I was essentially compromising my mother’s health by forcing her to work two jobs to pay for dental school. At times like this, when I was ready to give up, I never even thought of calling my father. He and I just didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  Dental school also forced me to change my look. During our dental clinics, when we met with the public, students were expected to look like professionals. For starters, I didn’t know how to shave. I found a barber to tighten me up every couple of weeks, but between visits, I fumbled around trying to come up with a do-it-yourself approach. Without reliable advice on how to apply aftershave and avoid razor bumps, I wasted a lot of money trying out different drugstore products. Isn’t this what a father is supposed to show you? My mirror became my silent partner, keeping secret my attempts to imitate the techniques that I’d insisted my barber demonstrate to me. But I never got my face as smooth as I wanted.

  Also, dental students were required to wear ties, and I didn’t know how to tie one. Once again, I had to force myself past the nervousness of asking someone to show me the things my father should have taught me. “Whatever it takes, I’ll do,” I’d tell myself. “I’m not going to let this hold me back.” This time I dropped my pride, showed up to a class early, and asked a white classmate to show me how it was done. He graciously gave me a tie-tying lesson in the bathroom, and we never spoke of it again.

  I needed even more help than that to transform my look from laid-back college student to professional. Then a teacher all three of us knew from our high school days named Mr. Charles strutted on the scene like a fashion savior. I had admired Mr. Charles for his suaveness since the first day I glimpsed him stepping out of his Mercedes-Benz in Gucci shoes and a perfectly tailored Armani suit. A native of Haiti, he taught French at University High. He was without a doubt the best-dressed person I’d seen up to that point. His look reeked of quality and professionalism. From the little I knew of designer clothes, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to afford a fraction of Mr. Charles’s style.

  When I got to Seton Hall, I found out that Mr. Charles had a business up the street. He owned a men’s clothing boutique within walking distance of my dorm. He made custom suits, even going to Milan twice a year to shop for fancy fabrics. The first thing I bought at his store was a versatile knit shirt. I could wear it as a casual shirt or a jacket with a mock turtleneck underneath. He must have chopped half the retail price off for me because he knew I loved it.

  Needing his expertise while in dental school, I’d stop by whenever I was in the vicinity, help myself to a beer in his private refrigerator, and sit down for a chat. He always welcomed me warmly and schooled me on fashion details I had never heard before: the proper fit of a suit, exactly where a belt should lie on your torso, how much shirt sleeve should show at the end of your jacket.

  If I had a big event coming up, I would tell him and he would help me pull together a great look. For an annual dental school dance that we called “The Tooth Ball,” he custom-fitted me with tan slacks and a navy blue blazer with subtle checks in the fabric. I got Sam and Rameck hooked on his boutique, and they started shopping there, too. He loved seeing us walk in the door, and he always gave us healthy discounts since we usually had more lint than money in our pockets.

  He knew we had to scrape to afford our education. After the Newark Star-Ledger ran a front-page story about our pact on the day we graduated from medical and dental school, we ran into Mr. Charles. “Saw you in the paper,” he said with pride. “I want you to come by the store later on.” When we arrived, he told us he wanted to give each of us a pair of custom-made slacks. “It’s my gift,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but think he had shown me more support than my own father had.

  My late lessons in shaving, grooming, dressing—the things my father should have taught me—turned out to be things that most embarrassed me. To be twenty-three and not know how to tie a tie? That screamed to the world that my father wasn’t in my life. But I knew I had to get over it. I had to ask for help, despite the pain, because I wanted desperately to move my life forward.

  It didn’t help my state of mind to see so many of my dental school peers from the middle class who had the steadying influence of both parents and were lucky enough to take it for granted. I saw classmates with trust funds and kids with fathers who were well-connected businessmen. Watching them live their more privileged lives bothered me, because these kids had their futures all lined up. I felt I couldn’t compete; I barely knew anything about the professional world that awaited me. I knew only to keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope to God that my career would fall into place if I could just manage to graduate.

  It wasn’t that I needed my dad to be rich. I just needed him to be there. He might not have been able to pay my tuition or hire me in the family dental practice, but what burned me up was that he didn’t know or care about my pressures. He left the whole ordeal on my mom’s shoulders when he should have been helping her out. I wish he could have provided an additional source of advice, resources, anything, so I could have given my mother a break. Instead, he just put his hands in his pockets. And that’s why, like the professional athletes who send shout-outs to their moms on camera, it’s become important to me to let Mom know how much I appreciate her for all her sacrificing. That’s why I now make it my business to send her on an annual vacation. She’s earned it. I know that even now, she’s got my back.

  On the positive side, I do believe that not having a father present in my life made me more of a go-getter. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been on the lookout for opportunities to put myself on the road to succes
s. Having never had a dad to go to for advice or assistance, I knew I would have to chip away at the obstacles in my path by myself. That’s what made me tune in to the message of the Seton Hall recruiter that day, when Rameck and Sam were cutting up and not really listening. Sometimes I wonder if I would have turned out this way if I had had a strong father in my life. It’s impossible to know. As a longtime observer of father-son relationships, I can say that I’ve seen fathers push their children in ways that aren’t always positive. I’ve witnessed some friends make life-altering decisions to please their fathers that they otherwise would not have made. Several of my classmates became dentists just to make Daddy happy. That was one thing I didn’t envy. I was always my own man, chasing my dream because I wanted it. I could take a more relaxed approach, setting my own goals because I answered only to myself.

  That go-getter side of me pulled me through the tough times, but it also ended up taking me from a kind of benign neutrality toward my father to outright resentment. Where was his hustle? Where was his second job? My mom’s attitude was “You just focus on school, George, I’ll worry about the bills.” Where was his paternal instinct? He was just as responsible for my existence as my mother was. If he had done half of what my mom did, or even a quarter, I might have respected him. Heck, show me some effort, if it’s only that you tried to bring in some extra cash but it didn’t work out.

  After dental school graduation, there were still mountains to climb. My classmates hit the ground running after dental school. But I hit the ground with a serious thud. It cost $1,000 to take the licensing exam: Mom had to dig into her retirement savings again to help me with the fee. Again, no help from Dad. During my dental residency, my self-doubt got worse. I felt deflated. Now that I was finally in the workplace, I felt completely out of place. Did I reach too far out of my league? To get into this profession, you need contacts and some money. I didn’t have either. And nobody was holding out a hand to show me the ropes.