Keeping the Faith
Page 29
Marc Little currently resides in Los Angeles. Marc has been self-employed as an entertainment and civil prosecution lawyer for the past eight years.
Regina Little-Durham, M.S., M.P.H., resides in Ellicott City, Maryland, with her husband and two children. She is a successful health care consultant with a health care management, research, and policy firm. In addition to her client work with communities, local and state governments, and health care providers to improve health care access to the poor and minorities, she is a volunteer at a rape and crisis counseling center and donates time serving as an advocate for others who need health care advice or are having difficulties with their insurance company or other health-care-related issues. She believes that as African Americans, we must be much more proactive when it comes to our health and well-being. Only then can we truly address the disparity in health care outcomes that exists within our community.
Rhonda Thompson Maddox lives in Shelby, North Carolina. Currently, she works at a family-owned car dealership in Forest City, North Carolina. She is married and has two adult children.
Tina Marshall-Bradley lives in Columbia, South Carolina, with her husband and two children. She is currently a professor at Benedict College.
Elnora Massey is fifty-two years old and lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She has worked for a federal agency for nineteen years. It has been an honor for her to write the story published in this book. “I thought that all my tears were dried up until I started to write,” she says. “Thank you.”
Ebuni McFall-Roberts, M.A., L.P.C., is a licensed counselor in Atlanta, Georgia. She lives with her husband and son in the Atlanta area and will be attending law school at Georgia State University this fall.
Billy Mitchell is an elected member of the City Council of Stone Mountain, Georgia. He is also the host of Community Forum with Billy Mitchell, heard on WCLK-FM in Atlanta, Georgia.
Wylencia Monroe grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the youngest daughter of Ruby M. Hood and Wiley Hood Jr. She graduated from Emory University with a bachelor’s degree in English and received a J.D. from the University of Georgia. She is currently employed as an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia.
Susie M. Paige lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is currently working on a book of Sabbath stories. She gave her stem cell donation in 2000.
Vonda Paige has been a publicist and writer for more than sixteen years. She has worked for the Associated Press, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and the Philadelphia Tribune. She is a member of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Paula Penn-Bradley lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Currently she works as a reservations agent for American Airlines. Paul was her only child.
Roslyn Perry is an administrator at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. She is thirty-seven years old and has a nineteen-month-old son, Ethan.
John Pettiford is currently a senior majoring in business administration and an honor student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He is a self-taught music producer.
LaShanna R. Price is originally from New York and currently resides in Birmingham, Alabama. She is a professional stage performer continuing to pursue her career in theater, television, and writing. She is a published poet with the International Library of Poetry. Her works can be read online at www.poetry.com.
Linda Robertson was born in Berkeley, California, and graduated in 1975 from California State University in Hayward with a B.A. in speech communications. She is employed as an executive assistant for an Internet service provider in San Francisco. Currently, she resides in Oakland, California, with her son, Christopher.
Elwood L. Robinson is currently a professor of psychology at North Carolina Central University in Durham. He was raised by two loving parents who taught him the value of hard work and perseverance through their own example. He has been married to Denise for twenty years and is the proud father of two children, Devin and Chanita.
Donnella L. Rucker currently resides in Largo, Maryland, with her husband, Anthony, and two daughters, De’Ven, age sixteen, and Toni, age eleven. Donnella and her husband are very active in the Kettering-Largo-Mitchellville Boys and Girls Club, and they were honored with the organization’s Man and Woman of the Year award for 2001–2002. Donnella coaches cheerleading, Anthony coaches football, and together they run the Mini Mix (five to nine years old) basketball program.
Lana Rucks is currently a graduate student in psychology at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. She provides community service work to teen mothers and women with AIDS, and currently resides in Dayton with her husband and daughter.
Sondra Simmons is a single mother of three from Clinton, North Carolina, currently residing in Laurel, Maryland. She is a full-time employee of the federal government and hopes to return to school in the near future to complete her bachelor’s degree.
Joyce Smiley is the mother of radio and television personality Tavis Smiley. Currently she resides in Kokomo, Indiana.
Marilyn Smith was married to firefighter Leon Smith for over twenty years when he succumbed to the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Center. Leon was forty-eight years old at the time. They have three daughters: Yolanda, who at eighteen attends Johnson C. Smith College; her twin sister, Tiffany, who attends Bennett College; and Nakia, who is twenty-five years old and attends college in Brooklyn.
Linda Spruill is currently an executive assistant for the vice president and head of antiviral development (HIV compounds) at Shionogi USA, Inc. She is one of Martha Spruill’s ten children.
Gigi Steele is an environmental specialist with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. She graduated from Spelman College with a bachelor of science in 1982. She has two sons and has been married for twenty-one years. This story is dedicated to her grandmother, Magdalene T. Perry.
Angela Pea Stroble lives in Greenville, South Carolina. She works for the law firm of Fletcher N. Smith, Jr., L.L.C.
G. Jean Thomas graduated from Georgia State University with a B.A. in political science. Currently she resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is also attending graduate school at Clark Atlanta University.
Ray Thomason is a graduate of Fisk University and currently serves as an officer in the United States Air Force. He and his wife reside in the San Antonio, Texas, area.
Diane Triggs began working in corporate America in 1974 at the age of twenty-two. Today she takes pride in being a choir member of the True Light M.B. church in St. Louis, where she is also the coordinator of the junior church.
lyanla Vanzant is a motivational speaker and teacher in a class all her own. For eighteen years she studied everyone and everything that spoke to personal strength, personal growth, and empowerment. She then integrated that information with her own experiences and developed a commonsense approach to addressing life’s challenges. As the founder of Inner Visions Worldwide Network and the author of seven best-selling and award-winning books, Vanzant has reached millions of people with the transformational and healing power of her message.
Audra Washington’s music career began in 1991 at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Later she became the director of creative music and publishing at EMI-Jobete Music Publishing. Audra is a graduate of Bennett College and resides in her native city of New York.
Booker T. Washington has been the CEO of OnAire Inc. since September 2001. He is also the managing director of the holding company TomCat Entertainment, which includes OmniEvents, Inc., and OnAire Inc. He is married to Chathay Washington and has three children, Booker III, Tiffany, and Amber.
Dr. Cornel West is currently a professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Prior to this, he taught at Yale, Union Theological Seminary, and was the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University, where he taught Afro-American Studies and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of numerous articles and nineteen books including The Cornel West Reader and Race Mat
ters. In addition to his activities at Princeton, West is a guest lecturer at colleges and universities across the country.
Gay Wheeler-Smith is a nurse manager at a teaching medical center in New York City. She resides in Westchester County, New York, with her daughter and mother. She and her daughter are working on their first book, which will be published in the fall of 2002.
Judge Trudy M. White currently presides over criminal, civil, and traffic cases. She supports and encourages behavior that develops strong children, strong families, and strong communities, and is well regarded for the many civic and cultural activities that she is involved in.
Tanya Dugat Wickliff is a motivational speaker, business consultant, and community advocate promoting empowerment, enrichment, and enlightenment issues such as economic vitality, technology, self-love, and holistic health. She is president of TANCOE Resources Unlimited, national business director of the Do for Self Project, founder of the FreshStart Foundation, and consultant to many small businesses. Tanya has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston, an M.B.A. from the University of Texas—Dallas Executive Program, a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, and twelve years’ engineering and management experience, including international travels. She is from Liberty, Texas, and has three sons, Jamar, Raymond, and Cortlan.
Judy Williams is a parent and youth development advocate and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned a B.S. in organizational leadership and is currently employed at the national headquarters of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
Karen Williams manages maternal and child health and minority health programs in a Detroit-area health department. A former NAACP branch president, she is a published poet, essayist, and fiction writer; immediate past president of the Detroit Writer’s Guild; and a Cave Canem African-American Poetry Fellow. She lives in Inkster, Michigan.
Donna M. Woodard is the youngest of eight children. Currently she resides in Pensacola, Florida, and is working on a master’s degree in communication disorders/speech language pathology at Florida State University.
Joylyn Wright graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1996 with her B.A. in English. She was born in New York City and raised in Bonneau, South Carolina, from the age of eight. Currently she works at a waste management company in Columbia, South Carolina, and dedicates this story to her mother, sister, and late father for showing her what strength really is.
Yolanda Zanders-Barr is an electrical engineer with the Department of Defense. She has been happily married to James Barr Jr. for four years.
Kaye Barrow Ziglar resides in Greensboro, North Carolina, with her five-year-old son, Garrett, and husband, Rod. She is an ordained deacon in the Presbyterian Church and also serves as hospital adjunct chaplain. Inspired by the loss of her daughter, Lauren Grace Ziglar, who passed away on March 17, 2001, she founded Motivating Grace, a motivational speaking ministry that places emphasis on topics tailored for and about women.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2004
Copyright © 2002 by Tavis Smiley
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2002.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Smiley, Tavis.
Keeping the faith : stories of love, courage, healing, and hope from Black
America / [edited by] Tavis Smiley.
1st ed.
New York : Doubleday, 2002.
p. cm.
1. African Americans—Social conditions—Anecdotes. 2. African Americans—
Psychology—Anecdotes. 3. Conduct of life—Anecdotes. 4. Social values—
United States—Anecdotes. 5. African Americans—Biography—Anecdotes.
E185.86. K435 2002
973′.0496073’00922—dc21
2002073728
eISBN: 978-1-4000-7593-5
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.0