The Last Wedding

Photo Courtesy Gwen Michel's Facebook page.

By Will Brown

A half dozen of us sat at the breakfast table talking about life and where it’s taken us over the years. All six of us were married and living hundreds of miles away from each other, however, it was yet another wedding that brought us together once again. Before the food came, I exclaimed to no one in particular “This is the last wedding.”

There was a protestation that there will be one more wedding next year, which was a valid point. But, that wedding will be somewhere in the Caribbean, and the entire cast of characters will not be there.

Photo courtesy Gwen Michel

Yet, on that morning in South Lake Tahoe, California

Photo by Will Brown

the six of us were just one offshoot of a group that has grown over the years from a motley crew of four homeboys from Central Florida to a cross-country collection of clowns at various stages of the corporate ladder.

Nearly 3,000 miles away in the same Central Florida town that birthed this interwoven collection of friendships the father of one of the original crew celebrated the final groom and his bride on Facebook: “The HB4L era comes to an official end today in Lake Tahoe. They are all married now. Congratulations, Linebacker!! We love you.”

Linebacker was the groom’s position during his days as a varsity and collegiate football player. His wife was a volleyball player. They met on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in 2004. The years, the long-distance relationship and other hardships could not detangle them.

The “Hot Boy 4 Life” days ended in the shadows of the surrounding mountains on a winter afternoon with the rest of the members, their wives and a group that is now known as “the extended family” looking on. Those who were not standing next to the groom were in the seats of an exclusive country club snapping pictures and recording the moment on social media.

Just before the two exchanged vows the groom popped a surprise. He wanted to sing for his bride. So he put the microphone in his right hand, his left in his pocket and sang for the 100, or so, people in attendance. The bride fiddled with her tissue in her free hand. Eventually, she clasped both hands around her husband’s as he sang and the finality of marriage began to waft through the air at the converted golf clubhouse.

By the time the groom made it to the third stanza the couple looked each other dead in the eye —while most of their guests were dabbing theirs. The setting sun bounced off the peerless lake. The light made the couple resemble colorless silhouettes. Considering she was white, he was black and their friends looked like some of everything in between it was apropos.

There was not a head table during the reception, which was for the best. Self-selection meant the confederates who flew in from across America occupied two tables in the corner. The flying insults, gummy bears and stories were yet another indicator that time and distance have not separated the bonds that brought us together in the first place.

With the accidental timing that has become commonplace, the menagerie of people who traveled to the California-Nevada border witnessed the bride and groom change seasons on the winter solstice.  

Laughs and liveliness

-Wb

Left behind on the gridiron

Earlier this month the Center for the Study of Race & Equality in Education at the University of Pennsylvania released information about the graduation rates of African-American football players at the 10 universities that will play in the Bowl Championship Series this winter. 

In 2012, I spent two months investigating the graduation rates of African-American football players at the ten Football Bowl Subdivision schools in the state of Texas. The post below is the result of that reporting.

By Will Brown

His goal was simple: make the traveling squad.

Robert Blackmon was not thinking about getting his degree in the Fall of 1986. He wanted to prove he was good enough to not only line up for the Baylor University football team, but travel to games outside of Waco.

The former Van Vleck defensive back was warned to also focus on the classroom, but Blackmon was more devoted to football.

Though graduation rates for football players are on the rise, the number of African-Americans graduating continues to pale in comparison to their teammates. Whether it’s the Graduation Success Rate or the Federal Graduation rate that are touted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or other metrics complied by researchers, that fact does not change.

“I wasn’t the greatest student,” Blackmon recalls. “(When it came to) graduating, the counselors and coaches always talked about it. But my main thing was staying eligible and trying to play football. It wasn’t until my junior year that I thought about graduating.”

Blackmon left Baylor for a career in the NFL after his junior season. He wound up earning his degree after his football career was over, before embarking on a coaching career.

Blackmon took the road less traveled when it came to earning his undergraduate degree and he knows it.

Of the 10 Division I schools in the state that participate at the Football Bowl Subdivision level, Baylor is the only program where the black graduation rate has been on par, or greater than, the overall team average at any point in the last five years.

“Kids are different nowadays. They want that quick fix and they want that money right now,” Blackmon said. “Everything good is going to take time. If it’s worth it, it will take time and effort.”

“I would share my life story with any kid who will listen about getting an education. That’s something they can’t take away from you. The NFL is not promised. Your chances of playing in the NFL are limited, but you degree can take you a long way.”

Blackmon wound up earning a degree in criminal justice from the University of Houston-Downtown in 2002. He and older brother, Terry, are the only two of his seven siblings to earn college degrees.

Because the former Bay City football coach did not earn his degree six years after originally enrolling his eventual graduation would not have been considered a success by either metric used by the NCAA.

The Crossroads region may not perennially produce blue chip prospects like other regions of the state, but each February area athletes sign National Letters of Intent to play football at some of the premier programs in the country.

Not everyone on a football scholarship at the state’s 10 Football Bowl Subdivision schools is black. But, according to figures submitted to the NCAA, many are.

More than 70 percent of scholarship football players at the University of Texas-Austin are black. Rice and Southern Methodist are the only in-state schools where blacks do not possess a majority of the football scholarships.

“It is more difficult, not impossible, to get a quality education at a university when you are working your way through school,” said Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“In my opinion, college football players in the state of Texas should more accurately be classified as university employees. They are holding down a full-time job that they’d devote 40-plus hours a week. Parents should recognize this reality. The likelihood is high that their son is not going to graduate in the same period as regular students. The statistics show that.”

The graduation gap

First-time, full-time freshmen students are only considered academic successes if they graduate from the college they originally enrolled within six years.

Southall, who spent a decade coaching varsity basketball in Tennessee and Colorado, said deciphering college graduation rates is a complex issue, one that is not assisted by the difference in the metrics used to calculate those numbers.

To further muddy the waters the NCAA has sponsored a series of commercials throughout the Division I men’s basketball tournament noting its athletes go pro in something other than sports. One spot even states “African-American males, who are student athletes, are 10 percent more likely to graduate.”

Southall believes both the Graduation Success Rate and the Federal Graduation Rate have inherent flaws.

For the 10 FBS football programs in the state, the success rate is usually between five and 10 percentage points higher than the federal graduation rate. The 2010-11 graduation percentages feature students that originally enrolled in college in 2004.

Baylor’s overall success rate for the 2010-11 academic year was 62 percent. The graduation success rate for the black football players at the school was also 62 percent, while the white rate was 68 percent and the Hispanic graduation success rate was 33 percent.

For the 2010-11 academic year Rice had the highest overall success rate at 93 percent and highest black graduation rate at 92 percent. Texas A&M had the lowest for black football players, and the University of Texas and Houston had the lowest overall football success rate at 57 percent.

Nationally, Rice was 19^th in Graduation Success Rate for the 2010-11 academic year. The top four schools were all Ivy League institutions. Meanwhile, the five schools with the lowest GSR were all historically black colleges, including Florida A&M.

In the past five years Rice has perennially had the highest graduation rates among black football players of the 10 Texas schools in the top-tier of Division I football.

Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin is only African-American coaching at the Football Bowl Subdivision level in the state. The first-year head coach was not made available to discuss graduation rates at his new school, or during his four-year tenure at Houston.

One school’s solutions

Graduation figures for football players, not solely African-Americans, at the University of Houston — the closest FBS school to Victoria — have been among the lowest among the Division I schools in Texas.

Out of 235 Division I schools, Houston ranked 179^th in Graduation Success Rate, on par with New Mexico State and Texas.

Maria Peden, Associate Director of Athletics for Student Athlete Development said, that goal will be met in part by focusing on student retention and cultivating an atmosphere that encourages athletes, of all backgrounds and ethnicities, to remain in school.

“We try to talk about graduation,” Peden said. …”If that is all you see yourself as you might not have the same academic goals. If we instill in you that I can do something else, then I think they are more likely to stay on the path toward graduation, or at least keep trying.”

Houdfad

The university has made a goal of increasing the four-year average of its Graduation Success Rate to 80 percent in the near future. Currently, that average is 68 percent for the nearly 400 student athletes in the university’s 16 sports programs.

Former Louise linebacker Desmond Pulliam is a former Crossroads athlete on scholarship at Houston. This fall he will be joined by Victoria West volleyball player Brooke Smith and Edna football players Mac Long and Devin Parks.

Peden recently visited Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Central Florida and other schools to get a glimpse of the tactics other universities use to assist their athletes.

In February, Houston hired a learning specialist, who will work with students that might need additional individual instruction that an academic counselor may not provide.

Another program the school instituted was the Cougar Pride Leadership Academy. Freshmen and sophomores are required to attend the semimonthly meetings that discuss commitment and ethics, but also provide career panels and skills that will assist their acclimation to college, as well as college athletics.

“Graduation is so important to everyone. You have these young people in your program for four or five years and you can’t help but want the best for them,” Peden said. “Obviously, the focus is on the athletics, but I think the game has changed. I think all of us are committed to the graduation of students. It’s a big commitment and it’s a two-way street.”

Adjusting expectations, graduation figures

“There is more pressure on these athletes, self-imposed and from athletic departments subtly, that they need to produce on the court,” Southall said.

For the past two years the College Sport Research Institute has produced an Adjusted Graduation Gap report, a study that compares graduation rates between student athletes and full-time students.

Among Southall’s findings: Black football players at flagship schools in BCS conference like Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, Alabama, Florida and others have graduation figures 25 percent lower than full-time students at that institution.

Football players at those same flagship schools have graduation percentages four percent lower than black male students at that institution.

Conversely, for white football players at flagship BC S schools the graduation gap between football players and all full-time students is eight points, and five points for white football players and white male students.

“The graduation game should not be seen as a negative,” Southall said. “Maybe it’s that you do a good job of graduating your full-time students, which is not a bad thing. The next question is if football or basketball players in XYZ conference are not graduating at a rate comparable of their fellow male students, let’s ask why.”

To answer that question the College Sport Research Institute is developing a database where they track the characteristics of football and men’s basketball players at the Division I level.

There will always be those that buck trends, but the institute hopes to track the academic preparedness of athletes in the two primary revenue sports as they enter college. Their goal is to see whether football and men’s basketball players come from the same socio-economic and educational backgrounds as their classmates.

Road to graduation begins in high school

Linda DeAngelo has studied issues related to students and student success during the last decade. She has found the academic preparedness of students does make a difference when it comes to their graduation percentages, whether they are athletes or regular undergraduates.

DeAngelo is the lead author of Completing College: Assessing Graduation Rates at Four-Year Institutions, which was recently published by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles.

In the 2011 study DeAngelo co-wrote it was stated a true measure of a university’s quest to doling out degrees may be in understanding the difference between the number of students that are expected to graduate and those that actually earn degrees.

The UCLA study arrived at a handful of conclusions that do not specifically note football graduation rates. But, it still provides context about why Rice, TCU and SMU have generally produced a higher percentage of football graduates than Texas, Texas A&M and Houston in the past half-decade.

Private schools produce more graduates in four and five years than public universities in part because they “enroll a much higher proportion of the most academically prepared students.”

Women earn degrees at higher percentages than men, with the gender gap widening in the past decade. Also, first-generation college students, of both sexes, graduate at a lower rate than their classmates whose parents have attended college.

Though it might seem a natural connection, the UCLA study found that students with higher high school grade point averages and standardized test scores graduated at a higher percentage than their collegiate peers.

Nevertheless, to DeAngelo when it comes to graduation it’s not a question of rigor for student-athletes. The same on-field skills and willingness to go the extra mile are transferrable.

“The same things that make them a college football player will help them academically and help them obtain a degree,” DeAngelo said. “I am sure there are a ton of athletes that know the playbook inside and out. Those same types of skills are learning skills.”

Tony Brooks agrees with DeAngelo. The former Texas Christian linebacker has always found athletics as a means to an education.

Brooks’ daughter Krysten graduated in the Top 10 percent of her class before accepting a track scholarship to UT-Arlington, his son Daniel signed a football scholarship at Oklahoma in February.

As Daniel, a former Calhoun running back and defensive back, weighed offers from Texas, Texas Christian and Oklahoma State the family put an emphasis on the education he would receive the next four years.

“We asked the different schools that were recruiting Daniel the graduation rate and the size of the classrooms,” Tony Brooks said. “We asked about the study hall program and things like that so we could get an idea how much they were emphasizing graduates along with sports.”

Football is finite; education is not

Brooks and Blackmon are well aware that only a minute percentage of boys will have an opportunity to play college, let alone professional football.

Florida, Texas and California are the primary producers of collegiate and professional players. However, the odds might be longer for those who play in the Lone Star State as more boys play high school football in Texas than Florida and California combined.

According to the NFL Players Association, the average career is less than four years. And, that is if someone makes it to the NFL. The NFLPA calculates that 0.2 percent of college football players are invited to the NFL Scouting Combine.

In his four years at the Bay City helm, Blackmon coached three Division I football players, including 2012 signees Derek Brown and John Paul De La Rosa. The coach said athletics are a means to an education, a lesson he has told his children and those he coaches.

“Every recruiter that called me, grades were the No. 1 priority,” said the former Bay City football coach. “They didn’t call and ask to see film. They asked, ‘How are the grades? How are they as a person?’ And then they asked about film. Grades were always the top question I was asked.”

Daniel Brooks also added potential recruiters were just as concerned with his off-field performance and exploits as his accomplishments for Rockdale, then Calhoun.

Daniel, along with younger brother Elijah was a member of the National Honor Society while enrolled at Calhoun. The Sandcrabs other Division I signee last month, Nick McCrory, was also a member.

“Every school, whatever school I went to, I was going to get my degree,” Daniel said. “I did look at that. I was concentrating on a place where I could go, play and get my degree.”

Daniel made that that statement in late January, more than month before he tore his ACL competing in the long jump for the first time.

As of December 2013, Brooks has yet to appear in a game for Oklahoma; however, he was named one of the Players of the Year for the Sooners scout team.

Even before tearing up his knee, Daniel said earning a degree was primarily about exhibiting discipline. He believed that if he handled his business things, like a NFL career and a post-football career as a businessman, will take care of themselves.

“It all falls back on your goals and your importance (to adhering them) once you get to college,” Tony Brooks said. “There are a lot of distractions out there. I can only speak for me and the guys I went to school with, our goal at the time was the NFL and then it was school, it kind of flips on you after a while.

“A lot of times, it’s your priorities and your goals. With the black community, you can see the pros, you see the nice fancy cars and you get out of focus.”

It’s possible to excel at both

For all the dropouts and cautionary tales, there are successes, locally and beyond.

Edna running back Devin Parks has aspirations of playing in the NFL. Parks plans to study kinesiology and become a football coach when his playing days are done.

“I know one day I’m not going to be a football player,” Parks said moments after signing with the University of Houston. “I would love to stick around the sport, so coaching would be the best thing to do.”

Parks is well aware that one cannot become a high school football coach in Texas, or most other states, without first earning a degree. When he signed, the three things he aspired to accomplish were to get away from home, play football and earn a degree.

Daniel Brooks has a similar mindset to Parks when it comes to parlaying his scholarship into something bigger. “It’s all up to me,” Brooks said. “Whether its 98 percent or that 20 percent, it’s all up to me and I am going to handle my business, so I don’t pay attention to (graduation statistics)”

Of course the personification of athletic and academic excellence is 2011 Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. Before embarking on a record-setting season, the former Copperas Cove resident earned his degree in political science in December 2010.

It takes a village

In his Heisman acceptance speech Griffin thanked everyone from his parents, his family, friends, coaches, and even school administrators.

DeAngelo and Southall are among those that said those entities that made things “unbelievably believable” for Griffin are instrumental to athletes achieving success inside out the classroom.

The Brooks family has always found Griffin a role model, because of his track background, discipline and focus in the classroom. They can only hope the similarities include returning to form following an ACL tear.

“I know with our kids we have told them from Day 1, when you go to college the main thing is to get your degree,” the elder Brooks said. “Getting your degree won’t guarantee you a job, but it’s giving you a lot better opportunity to secure a job than you have without it. Plus, the job selection will be greater.”

At some point the college football players have to accept some of the responsibility. But, DeAngelo said that if faculty, athletic staff and coaches are more encouraging, then athletes will take the classroom more seriously. Though additional measures to ensure that is the case, more can be done.

“There has been more focus on having athletes graduate. If I am a big-time sports coach, we need to talk about it,” DeAngelo said. “We need to talk not only about winning on the field. They are student-athletes, we need to talk to them about how graduating is important.

“The students need to know that their coaches and athletic departments want them to graduate.”

What’s in a name?

Photo taken from Folio Weekly

By Will Brown

The first time I saw the name Nathan Bedford Forrest I was a freshman in college who was distracted from another project.

At the time, I was studying in a library in the center of a campus that was once a plantation. The plantation owner was Florida’s first territorial governor, William Duval. If you’ve heard that surname it’s probably because there is a county in Northeast Florida named after him.

But, let’s stick with Forrest. Who was this guy whose name has become national news 136 years after his death?

He was the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. It was social organization for whites that was founded in Tennessee during Reconstruction. After about two decades the organization became dormant. A similar whites-only organization with the same name was created in the early years of the 20^th century with the hoodies, acts of American terrorism and mob mentality that most of us associate with the Ku Klux Klan.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

It was announced Monday night a high school that was named after Forrest in Jacksonville will be renamed in July 2014. The decision to switch the school’s name to either West Side High or Firestone High has caused tension and divisiveness at a school where 62 percent of the 1,327 students are black, 23 percent are white and 9 percent are Hispanic.

Was Forrest a great man? He had his faults like all of us. Considering the decision to name a school after him in an area of the country history has shown he did not visit nor influence was made by a school board that wanted to send a one-finger salute to a government that demanded it integrate the back in the 50s, it should not have been too incendiary to change the name in 2013.

“If you look at the history of the naming of Nathan B. Forrest High School, the students originally wanted the school to be named Valhalla,” said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of Duval County Public Schools during Monday’s meeting.  “Politics reigned and as a response to desegregation and the civil rights movement, the school was named Nathan B. Forrest. That was not the will of the students, and considering the opinion of the students in this process, I think it is an opportunity to give voice to students whose voices were not heard in the beginning and can certainly be heard now."

Then again the school is located in a town that is named after a general who was notorious for murdering and displacing American Indians. It’s a part of a school district that has schools named after educators, astronauts, politicians and pre-Colonial explorer who tried to steal land from the Spanish.

Like a lot of locales, Florida history is complex and simple at the same time. One of the easiest ways to understand it is to figure out the who and what things are named after and why.

There are local governments named after Confederates in Brevard, Pasco, Lee and Levy counties. There is a county in South Florida named after the former governor who dredged the Everglades — Broward. There are counties that are named after animals, fruit, conquistadors and, of course, Native Americans.

There are more than 400 municipalities and thousands of roads and buildings named after people, places and things, some of which, like Forrest High, may no longer be politically correct.

Long before I read about the origins of most Florida communities in Allen Morris’ 1995 book “Florida Place Names: Alachua to Zolfo Springs” Nathan Bedford Forrest’s story captivated me because it was one that I was not taught in high school.

It was probably too divisive and politically incorrect to speak about a man with considerable warts. Then again, I went to high school in a place where a NAACP leader was bombed on Christmas day, a piece of history that I learned from my father and aunt who are old enough to tell me the complete story of America’s first civil rights martyr.

America is a country that wants warm and tingly feelings with our information. We want our opinions to be validated by our peers. We want to believe that what we are told is completely accurate, even if there is much more context beneath the surface.

Nathan Bedford Forrest is yet another whose name has hit the iceberg of political correctness and sunk. As satisfying as the renaming of Forrest High may be, it’s yet another reminder that it’s easier to whitewash uncomfortable history rather than to learn it, understand it and refuse to repeat it.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Who knew defense can also be beautiful?

By Will Brown

Major League Soccer crowned its 18th champion Saturday afternoon in frigid Kansas City. The league has steadily grown over the years, but not to the point where it can challenge college football from a ratings, and spectator standpoint.

Congratulations to @SportingKC, the 2013 MLS Cup champions. The organization is a shining star for all of North American soccer. #MLSCup
— Don Garber (@thesoccerdon) December 8, 2013

At the risk of being deemed “un-American” by one prominent athletic, I chose to watch the soccer game over the SEC championship because the former appealed to me more. In a league with more parity than any other North American sports league, one play can change everything.

For all the talk about football being the sport of tough guys, it was fascinating to watch two teams fight for a championship when the wind chill was 11 degrees at kickoff. It may not have been the best weather to crown a champion, but it certainly showed off yet another quirk in American soccer.

Robbie Findley

Real Salt Lake and Sporting Kansas City have plenty of talent, and have been some of the most consistent teams in MLS over the last four years. Both teams sought a championship to validate their ethos — Salt Lake their patient passing and Kansas City their high-pressure, quick transition game.

My wife was asleep on the couch. My aunt dozed for large parts of the first half. Then my aunt took a look at Real Salt Lake forward Robbie Findley and was an instant supporter.

Every time Sporting threatened to tie the game, my aunt perked up in her seat and bemoaned Findley’s foes for having the gall to try and win.

Eventually, the match was decided in penalty kicks by a goalpost, which was fitting. Real Salt Lake had two shots bounce off the post earlier in the match the second of which would have effectively sealed the game with 17 minutes remaining. Once Sporting scored in the 76th minute, the intensity rose dramatically. One play, whether a moment of brilliance or a mistake, could have changed everything. With all the offensive explosions that were taking place in American football, it was a welcomed change from to see cohesive defending interchange with offensive variations.

As the soccer game approached penalty kicks, and overlapping ESPN’s three-hour window for the match and other ancillary television, the drama escalated by the second. The updates of the football games at the bottom of the screen sufficed as Sporting completed one of the biggest brand make overs in professional sports with a dramatic championship in front of its home crowd.

Congrats to your 2013 #MLSCup Champions, @SportingKC!!! pic.twitter.com/r0t6aqV9TX
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) December 8, 2013

When it was all over, I caught the final quarter of a college football game that was the allergic to defense.

Who can envision South Africa without Mandela?

Physically, the book is boxed up in an air conditioned storage unit. Emotionally, “A Long Walk To Freedom" is a book that will never leave my heart.

Its author, Rolihlahla Mandela, died Thursday. He was 95.

A man who did not possess as much confidence as his peers went on to change the world. His patience, determination, courage, selflessness and optimism were infectious. Even those who never met him, and I was one of them, were immediately drawn to him.

His autobiography germinated an idea in me to visit his beautiful country when it was no more than a wish to visit a faraway land.

Mandela was a national treasure, so much so that South Africans affectionately called him Madiba. As he fought for his life in a Pretoria hospital, one Johannesburg newspaper ran the headline “Holding on to a mighty heart.”

Mandela’s heart may have been mighty, but it has endured a lot. An unconfident boy from the South African hinterland grew up to become a lawyer and eventual leader of the African National Congress. He was married with a family when apartheid was instituted in 1948.



By the time apartheid crumbled, Mandela’s standing extended well beyond his compatriots. He was a worldwide colossus in strength. This was after being banished to a prison six miles off the coast of Cape Town for more than a quarter century.

Let that sink in for a moment.

It’s a story celebrated by most, but not understood by all.

Those of us who were not old enough to remember the true impact of apartheid should read Mandela’s autobiography to ensure similar human ugliness is not only never repeated, but allowed to blossom in isolation from the world.

A journalism professor dared me to accept that challenge and write a book review for an Editorial Writing course. I had less than 10 days to sift through nearly 700 pages. Like my professor predicted I didn’t finish.

At the time I wrote: “The book is a detailed story of Mandela, from his humble beginning in the Transkei region of South Africa to his ascension to the president of a democratic South Africa.

Published in 1995, the same year he was elected president, this autobiography gives readers a deeper understanding of why Rolihlaha Mandela--he was given the English name of Nelson on his first day of school--was politically active and the root of his activism before his 27 year imprisonment.”

The assignment resulted in an “A”. In my professor’s notes, he explicitly noted his expectation that I finish the book. That summer, after graduation, I did. Each page pulled me closer to the beautiful veld. Each page illuminated a dark era of the 20th century.

Each page unveiled the character that has been on display for decades.

As the weeks and months went by I planned and plotted to see the South Africa Mandela described. That a soccer tournament was being held there in 2010 gave me additional incentive. My one regret from 16 days in South Africa was not visiting Robben Island. My tour was canceled when 30 foot waves stood between the Island and the mainland.

Seeing Robben Island out on the horizon while taking a bus tour on a rainy winter afternoon in Cape Town sent goosebumps down my arms. The mainland is clearly visible; however, the choppy, shark-infested waters likely made Cape Town look further in the distance.

I was 25 at the time. Awe replaced the goosebumps at the thought any person would willingly spend my entire life locked away from their family and friends for their beliefs. The awe turned to appreciation for a man who resisted succumbing to the anger that surely raged inside him. It takes a special person to spend their life fighting injustice, refuse to channel that rage toward the minority whose hateful legislation and ideology segregated South Africa and be a leader for all.

Mandela’s first boss warned him “You will lose all your clients, you will go bankrupt, you will break up your family, and you will end up in jail. That is what will happen if you go into politics.”

He entered anyway. A friend I met on that South Africa trip recently told me Mandela “has always represented love and hope. Hope for something greater. He represents the image of what we hope to be: people of integrity, courage and unconditional love.”

Twenty years after Madiba and F.W. de Klerk won a Nobel Peace Prize for their work in eradicating apartheid the former can no longer breathe life into a nation.

As we mourn Mandela, the best way to respect his legacy would be to emulate his integrity, courage and unconditional love.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Who needs Disney when “The Princess and the Frog” are in your house?

By Will Brown

She frantically opens the door to tell me there is a situation that needs solving. It was 2:50 in the morning and the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed.

There was a frog in the toilet.

“At first I thought it was a turd,” my wife said when I asked her about it later. “Then I looked at it again and it was a frog. I closed the lid and opened it again and it was still there. Then I got you.”

On warm Florida night, the reptile found its way up the pipes and into the toilet. Hours later, I joked she would have died on the spot if the slimy sucker said “I am Prince Naveen!”

Since it was nearly 3 a.m., a fact I knew because I incredulously looked at the cable box to figure out what time I was being asked to investigate something I assumed could wait until the morning, I tried the flush the little fella out.

Two flushes later, the fist-sized frog was still there. Just as comfortable as he was before she opened the toilet seat and saw him sitting on her throne.

Since it was nearly 3 a.m., and our slippery friend wasn’t going anywhere, I retreated back to my bed and she reverted back to working on her stationery business. We both hoped the visitor would go back to wherever it was he came, so I didn’t have to forcibly remove him and so she could use the bathroom without the fear of warts.

That didn’t happen. The frog was still there. Since it was, I knew what my husbandly duties entailed: removing the usurper to the throne.

As I thought of how I would get rid of the frog, I enjoyed mocking my wife. First it was hinting that the raggedy reptile had escaped into the shoebox I commandeered to capture him. When that was bothering her too much, I reverted to lines from the Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog.”

Having a good-for-nothin frog as the antagonist as well as a FAMU graduate who worked extremely hard as the protagonist in this reptile removal meant the comparisons were far too easy.

It took about 10 minutes, and one froggy attempt at freedom, for the visitor to be captured in a shoebox. The princess, who was kind enough to part with the Nine West shoebox that held the big brown visitor, was more than happy when I took him to the other side. …

I walked out the house, shoebox in hand, freed the frog in the middle of the street, far enough away from the house so the princess could breathe easier again.

As soon as the situation was handled, she joked that she has already kissed her frog: me.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb