I eventually reached a point where I stopped caring very much at all what other people, with their racial hang-ups, thought about me, and learned to just pursue my own passions without worrying about whether that was what I was “supposed” to be doing.
I dig it. So, as a kid, did you get intoanytrouble?
I was considered a model student. Made Outstanding Teenagers of America and Who’s Who among American Teenagers. I wanted my parents to be proud of me, partly because my two older brothers had caused them so much pain and had given them a lot of trouble. I yearned to be their problem free child. And pretty much I was.
What were your brothers up to?
Let’s just say they had very troubled youths, much different from my own. One of my two brothers experienced just about everything bad you could imagine, school dropout, drug addiction, crime, prison. He was a great guy, in many ways, but his life was troubled in so many ways.
What do you siblings do nowadays?
My younger sister is a therapist by training. But she doesn’t see patients much these days. She directs a mental health agency in Ohio. She is one of the strongest people I know and is one of my heroes. She was a single mom, from the age of 16. She was completely unprepared for that at her tender age, as most girls are. But she endured and prospered eventually. Unfortunately, she recently lost her only son, who died suddenly and unexpectedly. That was deeply sad for us all.
The brother referred to above is deceased. He died many years ago from the consequences of his very troubled life. I miss him dearly. As I said, he was a great guy, despite his struggles. Despite our radically different live paths, I was very close to him. He was actually the best man at my wedding. Always wished that I could have saved him. Again, that’s part of what drove me, from a very early age. His troubles were especially heartbreaking to my parents, as you can imagine, who were endlessly devoted to us all, but could not protect us from all the crap that world hurled at us.
My other brother is best described as an independent serial entrepreneur. He has had his hands in many different things, some of them good, some of them less good. He too lived through some very dark times. He had a serious struggle with mental illness in his youth, which landed him in a mental hospital for a while, during the time when a person could be committed and hospitalized against
