Technically, Reggie was being paid to keep neighborhood folks out, but without any permission whatsoever from cemetery management, he secretly was ushering in local kids for what amounted to the best after-school program in our neighborhood. His passion was to rescue kids from the streets by giving them something positive to focus on, so he set up a tae kwon do class in the cemetery’s chapel. As a youth, he had studied kung fu under a charismatic master named Frank Melvin, also a hero in our community, and Reggie decided it was time to pass on the skill to an up-and-coming generation. We considered ourselves “in training” with Reggie, and we took it seriously. I was without a doubt his most faithful student. Usually I was the first to arrive and the last to leave.
In winter, Reggie would see my footsteps in the snow and know that, as usual, I had gotten there before him. Within a few seconds, I’d emerge from the shadows below the underpass, shivering in my flimsy kung fu uniform. Our training time together became my favorite part of the week. Reggie worked us out so hard that in a few years he had a small army of preteens strutting around with rock-hard abs. About a dozen of us would meet after school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We’d start with two-mile runs, a hundred jumping jacks, and fifty push-ups. The longer we trained with him, the more sophisticated the tasks became. Eventually, he made us lie across the hood of his car and do a couple hundred sit-ups.
We would do anything he told us, even though we knew Reggie had a prankster side. “You guys are tough, you can take it,” he would say before announcing some outlandish physical task. We let him handcuff us to the door handle of his Nova, and he’d make us run laps around the cemetery while he drove in long lazy circles on that endless perimeter road. Sometimes he’d tell spooky stories, then march us up the hill to the darkened mausoleum and send us inside on a made-up mission. Then he’d take off laughing in his car, and we’d have to find our way home in the dark. One night, Reggie had my brother Andre kneel down to hug a tombstone, then handcuffed his wrists together on the other side. Andre thought it was an exercise in patience, so he stayed there fearfully for hours waiting for Reggie to come back. Andre later learned that he had failed the mission miserably. If he had only looked up, he could have easily liberated himself by standing up and lifting his hands over the top of the short tombstone. We would laugh till it hurt about episodes like this, unless we were the butt of that day’s joke.
Yet Reggie had strict rules for taking part in the fun: “If you do any drugs, drink alcohol, cut school, or disrespect your parents, you’re out.”
Once, after a memorial service, he took us inside the chapel where the body was waiting to be cremated. “C’mere, I want to show you guys something,” he said, motioning us to him. “See this?” He opened the casket, exposing the face of a lifeless young man in his twenties. “If you go out there and start doing those drugs and hanging out with knuckleheads, this is what’s gonna happen to you.” I was hungry for fatherly advice, and I certainly got it from Reggie, who delivered it with a dramatic flair that still lingers in my memory.
Most kids probably wouldn’t feel comfortable hanging out in a cemetery, but to Reggie’s followers, it wasn’t a fearful place at all. To my mind, it was a safe haven. My mom used to say, “The dead people, they’re not gonna mess with you,” and she was right. It was the living, breathing people in my neighborhood who supplied the horror, and compared to them, the cemetery was a calming oasis, a yellow brick road leading to a magical place. The instant I jumped that tall gate every day, I had total peace of mind. I guess that’s why I never told Reggie about the stormy fights going on at my house. Kung fu classes were my outlet, and I didn’t want to waste a minute thinking about the pressures of home or the street when I was with him.
Over time, I got quite proficient in the martial arts. I know that I impressed Reggie because he’d pair me up with bigger and taller guys for my sparring sessions. Reggie observed me as I progressed from a shy novice fighter to one who could hold his own even in a mismatch. Eventually I started tossing my opponents around instead of being the one getting tossed. Then came the final test, when Reggie himself sparred with me and found that I could block all his moves. I could even execute a perfect “hang leg,” a tricky move where you balance on one leg and kick the other one as high as possible while arching the foot. He had to step back that day and give me my respect. I won’t forget the pride I saw in his eyes.
Reggie taught us a lot about martial arts philosophy and self-control, and insisted that we clear our mind at the end of every class with meditation. He talked to us constantly about channeling our inner power, or our chi, to overcome obstacles. “Never show fear or intimidation,” he used to tell us. “It shows that you are weak.” A few years later, one of my fellow students got shot six times and survived. Later he said that while lying on the street bleeding, he remembered Reggie’s words about chi. He focused his thoughts tightly on survival, breathing in through the nose and out through his mouth as he had been taught, until help finally arrived. Reggie’s guidance saved his life, he’s convinced.
Reggie always preached that using violence to solve a beef is ignorant. He urged us to respect our bodies and to use our brains. “Class, our focus is not on fighting,” he would tell us. “I want to build you up mentally, physically, and spiritually.” Although he taught us the kicks and punches of kung fu, he made it clear that he didn’t want us to use the techniques for street brawling. “Why would you want to hurt your fellow man because you have a disagreement? You’re smarter than that. Talk it out. Learn when to walk away. You should only fight to protect your life,” he often instructed.
But it rubbed some guys in our’ hood the wrong way to see Reggie developing such a following. Guys were always jumping in our face to challenge us. And there did come a day when Reggie let one trash-talking guy goad him into a fight, and Reggie beat him fair and square. When it was over, Reggie surprised us by apologizing and saying he never should have lost his composure like that. The funny thing is, his challenger was so impressed by Reggie’s skills and philosophizing that he eventually joined us in our training sessions.
Reggie, now a lieutenant in the Pennsylvania correctional system as well as a husband and father of three daughters, remains one of my biggest influences and the closest I ever came to the wise, attentive father figure. I reported faithfully to his after-school training sessions until the age of thirteen or fourteen, when I started to lose interest. It was a pattern that Reggie knew too well. “It’s like our bar mitzvah, a rite of passage in the most negative sense,” he has been known to say, shaking his head, about neighborhood kids when they hit their teen years. “Around here, on their thirteenth birthday, that’s when kids get pulled in by the lure of the street and start breaking the law.”
I was no different. I was starting to feel that heat of peer pressure. I was entering high school and moving into a new phase. I was now officially into girls and sports, plus dabbling in some other stuff that I knew Reggie would never approve of. So I stopped going.
IN HIGH SCHOOL, I played basketball, football, and baseball during lunch hour, and after school I played varsity baseball for University High. I was a pitcher and shortstop. I even had a few write-ups in the local paper, the Newark Star-Ledger, which added to my confidence and convinced me I was a sure shot for the pros.
I was always a smart kid, and good grades came pretty easily to me. My sports ability and demeanor placed me in the cool crowd. I was far from a nerd but I wasn’t a dumb jock, either. Through sports and mischief I earned my popularity. Although I wasn’t into the drug scene, I started hanging around the older teenagers, staying out late on school nights. Moms warned me to stop hanging out on street corners, but her words didn’t penetrate.
I avoided Reggie. I knew he could see into my soul and would know just how much I was compromising myself.
Without a doubt, my teenage hormones were starting to boil. I was starting to look at girls, although I had no clue how to approach them. Kung fu class
just didn’t seem as important as it used to, once my friends started bragging about how they had kissed or touched a girl. There was a lot of pressure to be sexual, and there was no way I wanted to be left out. At age thirteen, I was already a late bloomer. Many of my friends already had gone all the way, or at least that was the way they told it. We would often gather in a circle and tell one another stories about the girls we had crushes on. I listened carefully, because these sessions served as my main source of information on the opposite sex. In our earlier years, the boys would reveal how they’d touched a girl in a certain part of her body, but with the passing of time, they graduated to discussions of kissing and other acts. Sometimes I thought they were lying, but how would I know? Dayton Street School, just a few blocks from my house, was the backdrop for most of the stories. This was the elementary school I attended through sixth grade: a weathered brick laboratory of tough love with three floors of green hallways, crowded classrooms, and caring teachers who didn’t hesitate to spank. Inside our often vandalized bathrooms, hand washing was impossible since the sinks were missing knobs. After the school day ended, many teenaged boys would walk their girlfriends behind the school. As a kid, I often rode my bike past the shadows of teens making out there.
I wasn’t in a hurry, but I was curious. It wasn’t until my freshman year at University High that I kissed a girl for real. We locked lips in a school phone booth. I closed my eyes and pressed hard, imitating how I had seen it done on TV. I tilted my head different ways, pretending to make it more passionate, although I didn’t really feel anything. Then I felt something wet in my mouth and realized the essence of a true kiss from a girl. Instantly, I felt the electricity. I was in shock all day as I roamed the halls. I couldn’t tell any of my peers about my new experience, since it came so embarrassingly late. I would have loved to have shared my secret with Pop, since I had no idea what I ought to do next. If I ever needed him to teach me a class in Girls 101, it was at this moment. But we didn’t have that kind of relationship. All I had to go on was my mother’s direct order: “Don’t bring no baby into this house.” I’m now thankful that the kiss was as far as this particular episode went, but it would be a few short months later when I progressed to my next course of independent study, Sex 101.
Just like most teenagers, my friends and I were attracted by excitement and hated boredom. In those days, we had to create our own fun. Thirteen is an age when you naturally want to look your best, but for us, finding money to buy clothes was always a challenge. To my parents, wearing the latest gear was not a necessity. My mother would always tell us that a pair of “jeepers” sneakers, as we sneeringly called the no-name brands, was just as cool as a pair of Nikes. Although she was probably right, I didn’t know of any teenagers who would agree with her, so I found myself always thinking of ways to find funds. For a while I sold golf balls at the nearby Weequahic Park golf course. This job consisted of searching the course for golf balls lost in the bushes and then approaching golfers with a deal to buy them back for a quarter apiece. I would also bag groceries at the neighborhood store. This was my hustle, but the pay wasn’t very good.
In the neighborhood there was always an older guy willing to add you to his roster as a junior drug partner. I would watch as many of my friends took the job. They didn’t have to announce their new position. One could tell instantly by the sudden change in their demeanor and in their style. They would go downtown on Saturdays to shop, picking up the latest Air Jordans, new two-tone Lee jeans, and a Le Tigre shirt. And they’d accessorize with the most coveted of items: a Kangol hat and a belt buckle that spelled out their name. I always wanted one of the beaver Kangols. They came in different colors and you could brush its soft hairs into certain patterns. My mother always insisted that “clothes don’t make a person.” Yeah, I’d think, but they could make a person feel a lot better. How could I hang around my friends or even talk to a girl without wearing the latest styles?
At first I resisted the overtures of the guys who tried to recruit me to sell drugs. I depended on my athletic abilities, which were better than average, to keep me popular in the’ hood and at school. During the summer after my eighth-grade year, I played shortstop on a softball team fielded by the housing project across the street. We couldn’t afford uniforms but we did have royal blue T-shirts with yellow lettering that read “Kretchmer Homes Softball Team,” the official name of the projects on Dayton Street. That year we won our district championship. I remember holding the team trophy high and feeling like a star when we drove around the neighborhood in our coaches’ cars, honking the horns and yelling out the windows in an impromptu parade. Sadly, many of the summer programs I took part in don’t exist anymore, due to budget cutbacks.
My friends and I played basketball from early morning into the night at the Dayton Street School court. One guy I used to play with there was called Tank-Tank. His father, Frank Melvin, was the guy who taught Reggie kung fu. But by then, his father was dead and all that was a legend. Frank Melvin, who grew up in the Dayton Street projects, had kept many local youngsters off the streets in the 1970s with his inspiring kung fu classes held in the basement of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, just a few doors from my house. Reggie, his most promising student, served as his personal assistant, opening up the building and taking the class through warm-ups. I was just a little boy then, but I remember that Frank had a black belt in kung fu and a grassroots leader’s charisma. On Saturdays, he would organize boxing matches at a nearby school and charge neighborhood folks a few dollars to come in and see the local talent. Then he’d give the winners most of the ticket profits so they’d have some money in their pockets and not have to turn to selling drugs.
Known as Wu-Chi to the students in his Young Kung Fu Association, he taught them to respect and protect their neighborhood. In 1981, he contacted the Guardian Angels to discuss starting a Newark chapter to help keep order near the unruly Dayton Street high-rise. It wasn’t long before he became a famous casualty. While on patrol in the projects on the night of December 30, 1981, Frank and a bunch of his newly recruited Angels heard a report of a robbery at a nearby bar, The People’s Tavern, and raced to investigate. Reggie remembers that day well because Wu-Chi had begged him to come along on patrol. But Reggie had just moved into an apartment and couldn’t make it that night. As it turned out, Reggie narrowly missed out on seeing a tragedy unfold.
At the tavern, Newark police mistakenly assumed Frank was the robbery suspect and fired on him, killing him almost instantly. I was eight at the time, and I knew it was a blow for our whole neighborhood. The strongest leader we’d ever seen had been cut down abruptly, leaving a wife, three sons, and an entire community to mourn their loss.
His sons grew up in the Dayton Street projects, and we often crossed paths. Tank-Tank had a chubby little brother, whom we called Mike-Mike. He was about seven years younger than me, and we used to spend a lot of time shaking him off so he wouldn’t follow us around. I used to give him quarters to go to the store and get me juice and chips. He was too little to play with us, but he’d always hang around the court and throw the ball back to us if it bounced his way.
Their home life after Frank’s death appeared to be in ruins. Their mom, it was said, couldn’t pull her life back together after her husband’s death. Her rudderless, fatherless boys got drawn into the drug culture, and Mike-Mike ended up with the longest rap sheet of all. He served time off and on for various assaults and robbery and drug convictions.
In December 2005, the front page of the Star-Ledger revisited all these people from my childhood in a chilling way. The headline screamed that “Mike-Mike” Melvin, age twenty-five, had been charged in a grisly quadruple murder at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church—the same site where his father once taught kung fu.
Coincidentally, it may have been my own Moms who was first to walk past the murder scene. As usual, she had been up at the crack of dawn to sweep our block clean. Moms belongs to St. Thomas Aquinas, and she always tidies the
sidewalk in front of the church during her morning routine. Engrossed in her work at six that morning, she didn’t notice the four bodies a dozen yards away. A deacon arriving to open up the church about an hour later found the bodies and called the police. When Moms glanced outside a short time later, police were swarming everywhere, and the yellow tape they were stringing up stretched all the way to her front yard. She ran down the street, where she watched as police put the four in body bags and drove them away.
Investigators pieced together a story about how the four victims, all of whom had robbery convictions, died. They believed that Mike-Mike, already awaiting trial on a previous murder charge, was a dangerous criminal, and that he was drunk when he walked his four victims down the street and put bullets through their heads.
Seeing Mike-Mike’s life story splashed on the front page was a sad testimony to how the streets had gobbled up another fatherless youngster. There’s no doubt in my mind that Mike-Mike, who was only seventeen months old when he sat in the front row for his dad’s funeral, would have turned out differently if his father hadn’t been slain. Reggie has told me stories about how Wu-Chi used to serve as the truant officer for the entire neighborhood, chasing down the boys who missed his kung fu classes. “If you weren’t at that class, you better not be outside playing. Kids would hide if they missed practice,” he remembers. “We knew if Wu-Chi saw us, we were gonna get it.
“If Wu-Chi had been alive, his boys’ lives would have been different,” Reggie believes. “If he didn’t tolerate that kind of behavior from his students, he definitely wouldn’t have tolerated it from his sons.”
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers Page 10