I haven’t conquered every problem, though. I still smoke cigarettes. I will get around to quitting one of these days.
By the time I stopped drinking for good, George was in high school and I had missed out on his early years. I was hopeful, though, that things between us would change as he got older. I envisioned that as he matured, we would be able to talk man-to-man, and I would explain to him the things I was going through. Then he would get to know me better, and I would get to know him, similar to the bond I created with my father in my thirties. I thought I had plenty of time, but I guess I put my money on the wrong horse. I was waiting on a day that so far hasn’t materialized.
Once George and Garland reached their teens, I stopped coming for longer visits because it seemed they wanted to be with their little friends and they didn’t have a lot of time for me. But I made it a point to be there for the big events in his life. I’m proud that one time when he wrote me and asked for money to buy a car, I was able to send him the full amount that he asked for. I’m proud that I made it to all of George’s graduations. But I couldn’t help but see signs that I had waited too long to kindle a relationship. I made a four-day trip to Newark for George’s dental school graduation, but besides the actual graduation ceremony, I only got to see him one time. He and some friends came by my hotel room and stayed for a while.
I carry beat-up photographs of George, eaten up from twenty years in my wallet. I have framed copies of articles about him on the wall. But there’s more to fathering than just being able to display mementos, and I owe it to my son to try to make a change. That’s why I’ve had to teach myself to tell George “I love you” when we talk on the phone. It was hard at first. I’ve always been introverted when it comes to expressing my feelings. I never got to the point with my mother where I could tell her I loved her, and it was late in my father’s life when I bonded with him. This is all new to me, and I’m only feeling my way. The only road map in parenting that we have is what our own parents showed us. You don’t know what you’re missing until you grow up and become exposed to other ways of doing things. Then the question is, are we able to change ourselves?
Now I’m the one waiting for George’s attention. Now I wait on him to return my phone calls. I know that his job and his Pact responsibilities are time-consuming. He travels a lot and is incredibly busy. I believe that time will work things out. Things will settle down in George’s life one day, and when they do, we will get together. I’m only sorry that when he does get a chance to join me down here in South Carolina, we will have missed out on the opportunity for him to meet so many people in his family tree. All my brothers and sisters have passed on, except for Lanie.
Still, George has many cousins who are excited about all that he’s accomplished. They’ve seen him on TV and collected his write-ups. He’s family. That’s the way they think of him, although they don’t know him.
I continue to invite George to family reunions so he can meet the folks down here who are so proud of him. Perhaps one of these days, he’ll make time to come.
Chapter 3
GEORGE
What It Takes
WHEN THERE’S A WALL in the middle of a relationship, you know only what’s happening on your side of it. Finding out my father’s life story really opened my eyes. Due to the distance between us, I never knew anything about his parents or his upbringing until recently.
Learning about his life explained so much about why he is the way he is. Now I understand better the forces that brought about our separation.
The two of us have been cordial toward each other for years, but the problem is that our relationship feels more virtual than real. I know it’s there, like money that’s in a bank account. Yet it’s not readily accessible where I can hold it, touch it, use it.
It’s not that I have negative feelings about my father. I don’t. I have a lot of love for him and think he’s a really likeable guy. But every time we talk, I feel like we’re doomed to stay in our polite “Hi, how you doing?” world forever. We exchange some superficial words and then hang up. Click.
All I need to hear from him are the simple words “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”
I think that’s the one thing that will tear down the wall I built between us. Then we can start building something together. If he never says that, then we’ll just continue to be mouthing words, in our virtual relationship, for the rest of our lives.
I know he didn’t mean to disappoint or hurt me. I know he’s proud that he made it to all my graduations. And I appreciate that he came. But by showing up for only those moments, he left me alone to fight the everyday battles. All I knew was to keep on swinging.
I only wish he’d been there for me on the first day of school, not just the triumphant last day.
Instead, I rolled a cartful of emotional baggage onto campus when I arrived. And Rameck and Sampson lugged a ton of it, too.
So we traded our strengths. The things we admired about one another, we ended up copying.
Rameck, the most skeptical of the three of us, taught me to be less gullible. Back in those days, if you were selling, I was buying. Sometimes, as a poverty-stricken student, I would buy a submarine sandwich and bring it back to my room with every intention of eating half and saving the rest for the next day. But in our crowded dorms, I often ran into a hungry friend who would take one look at the sandwich and say, “Man, let me get some of that.” I never hesitated, even though I was giving away tomorrow’s dinner.
Rameck told me that I made it easy for people to take advantage of me. “Come on, man, haven’t you ever noticed that when you’re hungry, that guy never has anything to share with you?” He was right. Those “friends” never offered me their food, and worse, they looked at me as if I were crazy if I asked for some. It happened over and over, but I never noticed it until Rameck pointed it out to me.
Sometimes we ran into friends from high school who claimed they had high-profile jobs and bragged that they had connections to this or that famous person. It always drove me crazy to hear about all their success while we still had years of being broke college students in front of us. But Rameck always listened with a leery expression, picking up on how things didn’t add up. “You believed that?” he would ask me incredulously after some friend fed us a line about his soon-to-take-off career in the music industry. “How come he’s still living with his mom if he’s producing records?” Rameck would ask. Countless times he gave me that “This is bogus” look that always made me feel ridiculous. He taught me to stop stressing out about other people and focus on making my own way to success.
Watching how Rameck didn’t take any crap helped me draw the line. And Rameck will tell you that I taught him to be less confrontational. He continually walked around with his fists clenched, ready to throw down and defend himself even if the situation didn’t call for it. Once we got to Seton Hall, Rameck had a hard time adjusting to the new environment. He got into fights constantly. I realized he needed to learn a little finesse. “Why do you get bent out of shape over every little problem?” I used to ask him. “Take a look around here. Does that behavior even fit in here? You don’t have to be supermacho every second of the day to get respect.” Over time, we seemed to meet in the middle; he became less defensive, and I became more assertive. We balanced each other out.
What Sam brought to the table was his phenomenal work ethic and also his shrewdness with finances. Sam has a strong sense of self-discipline that’s at the root of both of these talents. I’ve always been impressed at how he managed to keep a few dollars in his pocket to bail the three of us out, back when we were penniless students.
With a lot of effort on my part, I taught myself to copy his study skills, but I never could figure out how he had the discipline to save when we had so little income. The real reason Sam made sure to always keep a dollar in his pocket was that he knew he didn’t have anyone to fall back on. I had the luxury of being able to rely on my mother for financial help. But for
Sam, there was no sense in phoning home: Sam’s mom didn’t work and she had very little income. She hadn’t been able to pay for Sam’s monthly bus pass in high school, much less his college application fees, so Sam grew up fending for himself financially. At Seton Hall, he watched over his money like it was his lifeline. His future, he knew, depended on how well he performed in college, and he wasn’t going to let his grades or his financial struggle force him out. In his rearview mirror was his old Newark neighborhood, and he was determined not to return to that life.
Although we didn’t set out to do it this way, we ended up pooling our best traits and using them to complete ourselves. By accident, we performed the job our fathers had defaulted on. We helped one another become better men. This is what makes Sam and Rameck my real brothers. We pushed one another, carried one another when we were weak, and together we made it to the finish line. By graduation time, the three of us had coached and coaxed one another not to give up countless times. When we put on those caps and gowns, it felt as if we had accomplished an almost impossible dream. I only wish we could identify the exact forces that propelled us to defy the statistics facing fatherless boys so we could load our communities up with this ammunition.
Anyone would think that my brother Garland’s life and mine would have turned out identically. We shared the same bedroom, him in the bottom bunk and me on the top. We both slipped and slid, without a father’s firm hand at our back. But he slipped toward the streets and I slid toward school. While I filled out my college applications, he was spending more time than he should have hanging out in our old stomping grounds, across the street in the Stella Wright housing projects. As a result, Garland spent a few nights in jail on a minor drug charge. Today my older brother is an unmarried dad, although I have to say he’s doing a great job as a father. He and his beautiful two-year-old daughter have a close relationship and they spend a lot of time together.
How did we wind up on such different paths? I’ll never know for sure, but I think it’s partly because he didn’t encounter the same positive messages I found. Our mom never went to college, so understandably she didn’t emphasize its importance to her kids. When my third-grade teacher Mrs. Johnson explained to me the financial benefits of higher education, she instantly convinced me that college was the place for me. I could see my future so clearly from that day. That was all I needed to hear. Move off Quitman Street, own a nice car, have an interesting career? I couldn’t wait. “College is for me,” I told myself. “If I get a degree, I can be in control of my life.”
I don’t think Garland had that message drummed into him as much as I did.
Mentors make the difference. I trusted Mrs. Johnson’s words so wholeheartedly that I turned Rameck and Sam into believers, too. I’m the one who convinced them that we should make a “pact” to go to college together.
For Sampson, his karate teacher Reggie provided the voice that gave him life-changing advice. “If you don’t do your one hundred sit-ups, you’re not hurting anyone but yourself,” Reggie would say, and then walk out of the room. Those words echoed in Sam’s ears, and became the foundation for the work ethic that is his trademark. Just as Sam forced himself to do the required sit-ups and some extra ones, too, he became a top student by never giving up until he mastered the tricky concepts in our college classes. Years after Reggie instilled it, that work ethic is now doing triple duty—because Sam taught Rameck and me to use it as our biggest weapon against failure.
I’m not a father yet, by choice. I refuse to bring a child into the world until I’m ready for the responsibility—all of it. And right now I’ve got a lot on my plate, nurturing the many fatherless kids I meet who are starving for some attention and direction. Ever since high school, I’ve essentially been trying to brainwash friends I see going down the wrong path. “Look at the other guys from the neighborhood who got involved in drugs or gangs,” I tell them. “You see they’re in prison, they’re not having such a fun time right now. Is that what you want?” I push them to realize that their everyday decisions matter. So make your decisions reflect your dreams, I tell them. Only you can make your life something that you can be proud of.
I didn’t have a father to whisper encouraging words like that to me, but I can’t hide from the fact that there’s a ton of fatherless sons out here like me who are twisting in the wind, seriously in need of a positive role model. I can’t fix my past, but I can definitely immerse myself in our next generation so they don’t have to go through what I did. I can provide advice so they don’t bump their heads on the same wall that I did. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know where the trouble spots are on that wall and where young people are likely to bruise themselves. It’s my duty to pass on the knowledge, or else we’re walking in place.
I knew instantly, by the time we got to Seton Hall University: We’ve got to drop some bread crumbs and show kids like us how to get here. We’ve got to encourage them.
I felt a powerful desire to unlock the secret of success, to be the mentor who helps poor youngsters find their way here, as Mrs. Johnson helped me. So did Sam and Rameck. During our freshman year, the three of us made friends with a handful of other minority students and formed a group. We threw some parties to raise funds to expose students from the Newark schools to our campus.
The difference between Newark and Seton Hall is striking. In gray, unfriendly Newark, police sirens shriek constantly and kids hang out under the streetlights all night, but just down the street in orderly South Orange, where Seton Hall is located, everyone’s smiling, acting neighborly, and shaking hands. No lie, the grass really is greener on the South Orange side. Here, the lawns are fertilized and fussed over until they reach the perfect shade of golf-course green.
On a spring Saturday, we brought some kids in from a nearby Newark elementary school for a tour of the campus, and then put them in a classroom and broke it down in the best way we knew how. “Yo, shorty, this is how it is here. You can have all this,” we told them. “I know you hear from your friends that college is corny. But trust us, that’s wack. This is where you want to be.”
It definitely wasn’t your average college tour. But we were youngsters ourselves, doing our best to persuade the grade school kids we’d assembled to think past the quick fix. We wanted them to realize there’s more to “making it” than getting a new pair of sneakers, some jeans, a nice watch. We tried to connect with them, playing up the advantages of campus life from our vantage point: “Here, you can eat as much food as you want from the cafeteria. You’ve got cable television in your room, and air-conditioning, too.” This is one place, we told them, where you don’t have to worry about fighting every day. And there’s not always someone tapping you on the shoulder, trying to recruit you to do something illegal.
Some were open to our talk, others resisted. Can you blame them? At home they didn’t have anyone helping with their homework or encouraging them to think about college.
We knew it would be hard undoing the brainwashing that these kids had endured for years. For us, that was just the beginning.
And truthfully, parents who have never been to college can’t be expected to supply the advice that will help their child find their way through the testing and application maze. It’s funny how so many professionals from the middle class complain about urban youths, instead of realizing that it’s up to them to open doors for these kids. We need to treat each child like a diamond, not a future thug. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Johnson’s encouragement or that chance encounter with a dentist, I never would have had the guts to dream of a world beyond Quitman Street.
That’s why Rameck, Sam, and I are firm believers in the power of role models. We wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t had them. We only regret that there’s such a shameful shortage of mentors.
In Newark, I’ve seen with my own eyes that there’s a tangible rift between older men and younger men when it comes to mentoring. All the politicians and leaders, they’ll take care of their sons. But no one�
��s helping poor kids from the ghetto who don’t have connections. No one’s passing the torch to them, or offering to help them let their light shine.
Mentoring is something that every professional needs to find time to do. It’s not that you’re training someone to take your place. It’s a legacy that you’re building. And the payoff is a tremendous investment in our community’s future. If you mentor ten guys, then you’ve created a legacy of ten professionals who can strengthen our community so that you’re not doing it alone. The middle class needn’t fear us, it should be mentoring us. We need to learn what you know, and in return, we’ll enhance and strengthen the groundwork you’ve laid.
I’ll never forget how it felt to be adrift and confused in college. I needed someone to help mentally prepare me, and to tell me simply that they believed in me. And that’s why I’m never too busy to offer advice to somebody who’s striving. As long as they’re trying to get an education and do something positive with their lives, I just can’t walk away.
Because I take this part of my mission so seriously, I collect new “mentees” all the time and I’m constantly interacting with them. Sometimes it gets crazy with the e-mails, calls, and text messages I get all day long from my crew. But I love doing it. My two newest mentees are Stanley and Taysha, both ninth-graders I met during the summer of 2006 when they took part in a youth jobs program. They happened to stop by my booth during a seminar at my former workplace, the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, and after we got talking, they just wouldn’t leave. I took an instant liking to both, especially when I found out they go to my old school, University High. So I just “adopted” them.
Bubbly fifteen-year-old Taysha told me she lives in the projects. She had just finished reading The Pact when we met, and she felt so exuberant about meeting one of its authors that a day or so later, she showed up at my office with her latest report card in hand. Not only had she earned straight A’s, but every teacher put a check in the “pleasure to teach” comment box. As soon as I learned that, I knew the kind of kid she was. Streetwise and book-smart, too, she’s a diamond in the rough who knows her priorities, but she’s having a hard time finding support to follow her dreams. I want to do whatever I can to help her stay on course, now that she’s entering into the high school whirl of boys and other temptations.
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers Page 6
