Interviewed by Jessica Abene
I’ll give you a quickie. I was born in Delaware. One of six children, adopted. Two here two there. One brother that I grew up with. Right now he’s in a nursing home doing pretty bad. He’s one year older than I.
Spent a lot of time in camps, Scout camps coming up. I got in some trouble, not a whole bunch of trouble. I didn’t do really well in school. I wasn’t that interested. I was interested in things like camp, theater, photography, and art, and singing, and drama. That’s what I was interested in. So when it came time to go to college I went and took the army test. I didn’t see college in the future. I didn’t see the money to go to college, I didn’t see the willingness or the smarts to go to college so I took the test and they said I could do anything I wanted to do and I chose moPic specialists since one of my loves was photography.
So I chose moPic specialists at 84 C 20. And I did that and went to the school in Fort Llama, New Jersey and from there instead of going to ‘Nam, they stopped sending people to ‘Nam, they sent me to Fort Huachuca, Arizona. There I ran into a lot of negative army experience. A lot of racism down there in that time in the early 70s especially for someone of my color wanting to be a photographer. They were like “no what the hell are you doing here” basically.
I ran into a lot of problems down there but I also did a lot of growing down there had some good experiences besides the negative, really negative some of them. It really made a difference. I got out of the army December 1974. I got on the fire department in Delaware in 1975, June 1975.
Fire department and I was doing theater as well, that was a love of mine. I ran into one of my dance partners and we got to dancing really really close and we danced out six babies. We have a couple grandkids now, we lost three sons, a set of twins, preemies. We are no longer married but we communicate, stay in touch.
So I retired from the fire department, resigned actually to do theater. I though it was gonna pay off for me, it didn’t, instead, ran into a lot of chemicals: alcohol, cocaine, all that mess. That tour my marriage up. Basically from late 70s early 80s, it’s been fighting the demons of the past, military demons of the past, but I managed to keep employment though all of that matter of fact. In fact I’m ready to get out of here to go back to work now. I drive a patient van, I gotta do easy stuff because I have two bad knees due to basketball, football, all that mess.
Love my two grandkids, they love me, my kids love me, love them. Always important. I never remarried. I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen. I hope I live some more life, see what’s around the next bend because there are some other things going on. 65 now and there is a couple more chapters and I’m anxious to see what they are.
I just moved into a new apartment, a nice new apartment and that’s as far as I got. I haven’t had a chance to put my things away, got my TV and stereo ready, but everything started going south as far as physically. I started feeling like really bad I’m not even sure. I have some junk food that I bought. That’s what I’ve been living off in that place a bunch of ordered subs, Chinese food, pizza, and all that mess because I’m always on the run driving that van. Go to sleep, get up, keep it moving.
Trying to get one of my kids up here, I had them up here the other day and my intentions were to give them the keys to my apartment and go in there and try to straighten things up. I have a couple dirty dishes in the sink and I know I got some trash that’s in the trash bag sitting on the floor, and I know I got some half a pizza sitting in the refrigerator, and I got some Chinese food left over so I’ll try to get them to get in there and get rid of that. And then when I go home I’ll try to eat right because I can cook. I cook really good. So I’ll try to eat right and get rid of the old mess.
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