Hi, Dad! — Appreciation of African-American Fathers

"Children's children are the crown of old men;
and the glory of children are their fathers."
-Proverbs 17:6

Children turn the tables and pay homage to their unheralded fathers.

It usually occurs after a remarkable play in football. Having made the winning touchdown or a crucial interception, the athlete returns to the bench. The television camera zooms in on a face beaming with victory as the lips form those two familiar words befitting the moment: "Hi, Mom!"

For Black women, the accolades are well deserved. But, with the vast number of Black men who love and nurture their children, one wonders why more sons and daughters don't turn to the camera and say "Hi, Dad" in a spontaneous tribute to Black fathers.

To hear some tell it, Black men aren't responsible fathers and husbands. The truth, however, is that millions of Black men love, nurture and support their families as hardworking husbands and caring fathers, as Reggie Jackson indicated by singling out his father, Martinez Jackson, at his recent induction into the Hall of Fame.

Joseph G. Madison, a 42-year-old fire marshall in Washington, D.C., is another example of a man who, without any fanfare and accolades from society, cares for his family and is quick to give credit to his own father, Waite, for molding him into the man he is today.

"It was a learned behavior," he says. "My father would listen. I could talk to him and he would not pass judgment."

Although admitting to sometimes falling short of his father's parenting skills, he has brought many of his dad's best practices to his own family. Madison has a son, Joseph Jr., from his first marriage, and if he had believed the "knock" against Black men, he may have been reluctant to remarry into a ready-made family. But in 1982, he met Christine McCall, a dental assistant and the mother of a child with a learning disability. The two soon married and began planning a new life.

When Madison is not working - and, to hear him tell it, even when he is - he says his wife, Christine, their 6-year-old son, Brian, 18-year-old Joseph Jr. and Christine's son, 21-year-old Sean Delbe, are never far from his mind.

"What I hope my sons learn is responsibility," Madison says. "Being a responsible father means taking care of physical and emotional needs and leading by example."

Everson Walls, a gridiron standout with the Cleveland Browns, is another man who openly praises his father.

Although separated early in his marriage, Wellon Walls made a point of keeping up with his children. He made sure that young Everson and his three brothers and sisters attended church and worked hard in school. When the youngster began showing promise while playing Pop Warner football, the elder Walls began teaching his son the game's fundamentals. The lessons stuck, and Everson went on to become a star player for the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. But he credits his father with doing far more than teaching blocking, tackling and pass patterns.

"One of the things my father taught me was respect," he says. "He always demanded it, and that rubbed off on me. That's what I want from my peers because I think I deserve it, whether it's in life or in sports."

Sometimes, the mark of a superb father may simply come by suppressing the male ego enough to allow other family members to prosper. Theaoseus Clayton Sr. parked his pride, which allowed his wife, Eva, to eventually win a congressional seat.

In 1968, Blacks in Warrenton, N.C., held a meeting to challenge the area's congressman. Everyone agreed that a change was needed, but no one seemed anxious to actually run against the incumbent. Eva Clayton finally volunteered, and although she lost that first race, she gained enough recognition to build an impressive career in local politics and state government. In 1992, 24 years after that initial defeat, she became the first Black woman to represent North Carolina in Congress.

Now Clayton, the father of four adult children and the head of his own law firm, sits on the fringe of eminence as a congressional spouse.

There's no such thing as a man's place or a woman's place," he says when asked about his male ego. "Her heights shouldn't be limited by me or because of me. Every husband should enjoy seeing his wife reach her greatest height even if it exceeds his own."

Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade in Los Angeles, is another person who won't let anything interfere with his family.

There's nothing in my life that has given me more motivation and direction than my family," he says of his 28 years of marriage. "While everybody else was pursuing a degree, my wife got pregnant and we got married. We had a son, and that was the motivation I needed to provide a better life for him than the one that I had, and to try to put my family in a position where they would understand that we had an obligation to take care of each other first and our people second."

Faced with enormous responsibilities, Bakewell admits to having had a lot to learn to become an ideal father and husband. But, he says, his family survived because of the couple's steadfast commitment to their three children.

Sharing the ups and downs of marriage is a major achievement, but Bakewell's biggest test came last year, on the eve of the Rodney King verdict, when his daughter, Sabriya, was hospitalized with cancer. He canceled his scheduled community meetings, public appearances, strategy sessions and news conferences to comfort his family and spend time with his stricken daughter.

His daughter died 45 days later. As a legacy to her, Bakewell designed and manufactured a colorful audio-visual cabinet for children, called the Sabriya's Castle of Fun. Since her death, he has donated the units to children's wards in Los Angeles area hospitals.

"When things are rough, you have a responsibility to be with your family first," he says. "What kind of person would I be if I left my family at a time when they needed me [and instead go] to help somebody else? It's the same thing I say to Blacks about Whites. They don't respect the fact that we leave our own communities to go help other people put their communities in shape. We have to first help ourselves. So, it was easy for me to practice what I preach."

Ossie Davis is another father who practices what he preaches. A veteran actor, husband of actress Ruby Dee and the father of three adult children, he is quick to praise his father, Kince Charles Davis, for instilling him with guiding principles—common sense, respect for others and moral strength—which he has tried to pass on to his own children.

"Well for a Davis, my father was a man who insisted that there were certain areas that he wouldn't be pushed," he says. "He would accept death rather than be made less of a man, and because he was that kind of person, Whites and Blacks respected him."

Davis needed his father's example during the late '60s and early '70s when he and his wife had to find a new way of parenting in a turbulent time.

"Lifestyles were changing and values were under assault," he recalls. "Everyday, mommy and daddy had to deal with something new that we never heard of before."

The couple finally called a family meeting and startled their children by encouraging the family to stay together, even if it brought some questionable activities into the Davis household.

We had to say to our children: “Look!" he recalls. "There are a lot of things that we don't approve of or agree with about the life that you are living. But whatever it is that you must do, even if it's something that we hate, you will do it in this house. We will not let you go. You will remain a part of us.”

The statement, he says, marked a profound break with many of the couple's principles, and the children sometimes took advantage of their new liberties. But, he said, they responded to the edict by supporting their parents.

"This is our family, and we decided to hang together no matter what," Davis says. "That is what we did, and that is what parents can do even to this day: Don't give up on your children."

Giving up is the last thing W. Roger Witherspoon of Garland, Texas, would do. He is a father who gives top priority to his family and his daddy-duties. Every morning, he prepares breakfast for his two daughters, Kir and Brie, in a ritual he learned from his father, William.

"Daddy always said that if you are head of the house, then keeping everybody together is your responsibility," he says. "What I do is simply those things that I learned from him."

Besides fixing the morning meals, Witherspoon juggles several daddy-duties in between his day job as a program officer with the Exxon Corp.

He once depended on his wife, Cynthia, to help him when a late business meeting or a job-related reception took him away from the house. But when his wife was hospitalized last year with lupus all that changed.

Suddenly, Witherspoon found himself balancing work demands, hospital visits and family obligations. For four months, he endured a grueling schedule of getting the children fed and ready for school in the morning and feeding them dinner and helping them with their school assignments after work. Witherspoon had other hardships to face besides a demanding routine. He also had to provide emotional support for two very worried girls.

Brie, the younger daughter, wasn't convinced her mother would live, Witherspoon recalls, because she believed people always died in hospitals. Kir, the older of the two children, floored her father during the family crisis by wondering aloud why her parents waited so long to have children.

"She said everybody else in school has young parents," he recalls. "They're doing this and that, but mommy is sick and you have a bad hip [from an injury]. You'll both probably be dead before I get out of high school."

Fortunately for Witherspoon, the crisis passed. His wife was released from the hospital within two weeks, but it took almost four months of recovery before she could resume her share of the household responsibilities.

When Cynthia did recover, she began spending her afternoons with Kir and Brie, which took the burden of commuting off of the family. Witherspoon also took his daughter's concern about his health to heart. He lost 25 pounds and changed his eating habits.

"The story does have a happy ending," he says. "Now that Cindy is spending time with the girls, there's no more late night commuting and she has gotten closer to them. As for me, I've lost weight and I'm watching what I'm eating. I'm even out getting exercise by cycling regularly with my daughters."

The good works of Witherspoon and the countless other fathers may go unheralded by the public. But their wives and children tell a far different story of love and appreciation.

Brie Witherspoon, for example, is one 6-year-old who astounds adults with her skills on the computer. She still remembers her first lesson from her father, Roger. "He told me to write down the instructions," she says. "The first time I tried it, it worked."

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COPYRIGHT 1993 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group