A Fatherless Son's Story

Honoring Fathers- Part 1

One Man's Journey

My Dad

Ron Gilliam and Sons and Grandsons

My “dad” started out as a Redcap for the New York Central railroad-a redcap was a baggage handler or waiter.  Shortly after I was conceived he exited from my mom’s life, never to return.   He eventually went on to become vice-president of the largest Black insurance company in the world.  Along that journey he re-married, fathered another son , educating him well, sending him to a private boarding school, then to Yale, and finally on to the University of Michigan where he obtained his master’s degree, after which he too became an executive with his father’s firm.  “Dad” once told him that he had a brother living in upstate NY, but there was never a follow-up.  (My brother, having become a very successful businessman, eventually became owner of a radio station, turning it into one of the most popular gospel stations in the south.) 

Life without a father

In the meantime my mom and I struggled, living in an apartment with no hot running water nor indoor toilet or bath.  (They were in the outside unheated hallway.) The apartment was heated with kerosene stoves—the kerosene purchased in 5 gallon cans from the gas station up the street.  As a ten year old it was no easy chore having to carry 2 cans at a time, especially with two feet of snow on the ground. 

As I approached manhood I passed the time going to school, playing semi-pro baseball, amateur softball and basketball.  College almost became an obsession, until I realized it was not a probability.  No one from our neighborhood went to college except World War II veterans on the GI bill.  Ironically it was around that time that “dad”, who was a pillar in his community, sat on the board of trustees of a well-known HBCU (historically black college/university).  (Years later I did attend college which eventually led to careers in sales and marketing management, job development, college recruitment  and teaching.) 

                                              I created my own model of a father.

My alternative to college was marriage, for which I have no regrets, other than the fact that not going to college temporarily limited my future options.  This was long before Pell Grants and student loans were accessible.  The arrival of my first born forced me to come to the reality that I was now a father, and inasmuch as my village wasn’t into raising children, I was forced to design my own model.  (My mother’s second marriage of 2 years ended in physical disaster.)  

Father and Husband-My Definition

First I had to define what I thought a father should be and here’s what I came up with:

One who provides a secure roof, food and clothing to their best ability.  One who is willing to listen and offer advice.  One who would play ball with his children, attend recitals and ball games.  And spend time vacationing as a family, when possible.  One who could be a role model to both his sons and daughters, and one who loved and respected his wife—which could lead to another essay.  While far from perfect, a serious attempt was made.  

To summarize let me say that in spite of the fact that some of us may not have been blessed with fathers in the home, we do not have to be burdened with the task of trying to determine what a father should be.  We simply ask ourselves how we would have liked to have been treated if we had had a dad, then we’ve found your answer.

I share this only to show that one doesn’t necessarily need that physical role model to effectively impact on the lives of our families.  Coming from a two parent family is of course the ultimate, however 70% of us don’t share that experience, therefore it’s important to know that we can design our own concept of fatherhood, developed from a model that we create, rather than from those “role models” created by the media and others who do not have our best interests at heart.

Note:    Ron met his brother for the first time in 2007.

Ron Gilliam lives in Decatur, Georgia with his wife, Gloria of 59 years.  They are the proud parents of 2 sons and 3 daughters (all college graduates), 20 grandchildren: 15 either attending or graduated from college (11 boys, 9 girls), and 2 great granddaughters. 

The Other Side of the Coin: Two sons, same father, different lives

Ron’s brother, Art Gilliam, has written a book about his life. Here's an excerpt.  

Introduction to “One America: Moving Beyond the Issue of Race”

Art Gilliam
The other son

I was barely old enough to ride the bus alone. I was riding to Bethlehem Center, which was run by a few white Quakers who had come to the South to teach us arts and crafts. The center was in the neighborhood next to mine, but it was a long walk, so I was taking the bus. I was so proud that Mother was letting me ride the bus alone that day. She knew I wouldn’t encounter any local white people, because I didn’t have to ride far enough to go through any white neighborhoods where they would begin boarding the bus. Sadly, and by design, Negroes, as we were called in the 1950’s, had to ride the bus behind any white passengers who got on. That’s what the sign said at the front of the bus. But the bus route began in our all-Negro neighborhood, so on this day I would not encounter any white people, and there would be no problems.

I remember that short bus ride in Memphis, my home town. It was a few years before Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus and triggered a bus boycott by Negroes, which was the initial incident that brought that boycott’s leader, Martin Luther King, to the nation’s attention. But that would all come later. At this time, I was only thinking about the arts and crafts awaiting me at Bethlehem Center and how proud I was that my mom trusted me to ride the bus alone. It meant I was a “big boy”! 

If I had written a book proposal back then about what happened to that 

boy, it would have had the most improbable of story lines. He would leave the segregated South at thirteen to attend a nearly all-white New England prep school and seven years later would graduate from Yale University. He would earn a master’s degree in actuarial science and go on later to buy a radio station in Memphis. Eventually, he would marry a white girl living in

Copenhagen, Denmark and together in Memphis they would watch a fellow named Barack Hussein Obama, who has an African father and a white American mother, be sworn in as President of the United States. Even the most liberal of book proposal reviewers would have relegated that one to the fantasy land bin. That is, if the script and author made it past the nearest insane asylum, assuming the author was not lynched before having the opportunity to be committed. Yet here we are only a few decades later, and the story is in the category of nonfiction. I suppose it would be fair to say this could only happen in America.  Yet on the way to this “only in America” ending are some very ugly stories that also happened in America. It is all part of life here and maybe everywhere really. We have our triumphs. We have our disillusionments. We have our challenges still to be met. 

The story does not begin on that Memphis, Tennessee bus. It begins a little earlier, when I didn’t even know I was a Negro. I was just a little boy with no awareness of race. Do you remember a time when you had no awareness of race? What an uncomplicated world! At some point life changes all of that. For now though, let’s go back to that age of innocence where there was no race, to a place where for me life was happy and simple – in Mama’s kitchen begging for a johnnycake.  Read more about Ron's brother.