The original traffic stop had occurred on a Wednesday night; by Friday morning the National Guard had been deployed into what had become a war zone. The business district had been reduced to rubble, hundreds of buildings were on fire, and troops filled the streets. This wasn’t the city I knew. These were pictures out of World War II in my history book. By Saturday night almost 20,000 guardsmen had formed a ring around the city that ran nearly fifty miles. Martial law had been declared, and a curfew was in place. By Monday night the rioting was over. More than 600 buildings had been seriously damaged or destroyed, 857 people had been injured, and 34 people had died. The damage to the city and its residents was staggering. A great effort was made afterward to address the problems that sparked the riot, but the community was never able to rebuild what had been destroyed. The businesses did not come back. Watts remained desolate. Dr. King said it all. “At the center of all nonviolence stands the principal of love.” Love builds. Hate destroys.
In the middle of all the chaos, my mother, brothers, and I were locked down in our home in the August heat, worried about my father, frightened of the men with Molotov cocktails who threatened to burn down the homes in our neighborhood. Bobby was only four, too little to understand what was going on, but David and I knew something terrible was happening. At ten, feeling like I was the man of the house in my father’s absence and that I had to take care of my mother and brothers, I felt the full weight of that responsibility. By then my father had survived the initial violent illness of withdrawal, and Dr. Hacker told my mother she could see him. Seeing my father meant driving through the riot zone, but with the loyalty and courage that have always characterized her, my mother got dressed the next day and asked Vernon to take her to the hospital.
My mother vividly remembers that drive. As they pulled up to the perimeter the National Guard had established around the city, guardsmen flagged the car to a stop. Vernon rolled down the window and began talking to the guardsman who approached them. From my mother’s viewpoint in the backseat, she could see the ammunition belts strapped around his waist. There were rows and rows of the longest bullets she had ever seen. After talking to Vernon for a while, the guardsman waved them through. Vernon drove slowly down the street. On both sides, the street was lined with national guardsmen, stationed a few yards apart, watching. Behind the lines of soldiers were ruined buildings, gutted, burned, looted, and vandalized. Rubble lay everywhere. This was a war zone, not the city she knew.
And she barely recognized the man she found in the small room at St. Francis. My father sat on the side of the bed in his undershirt and slacks, quiet, drawn, somehow smaller. They didn’t talk much. He was too exhausted. For the first time the man she had married, always so full of swagger and confidence, was frightened and anxious. Without the refuge of the drug that had poisoned and sustained him for two decades, he was left defenseless to deal with life on its own terms. He also seemed clearly embarrassed to have Mother see him in this condition. They chatted a little, she told him we were all doing fine, and after about half an hour, she kissed him and left. She would be back to see him in two days. For the next couple of weeks she visited him faithfully, every other day, until the doctor said he was well enough for his children to see him. Children were allowed to visit on Sundays.
By that time I was desperate to see him, to make sure he was all right, but I was also frightened because I remembered how my mother had looked when we’d gone to visit her at the hospital after her illness three years earlier. On the way to the hospital, my mother tried to prepare us by telling us that Daddy had been sick. He was getting better, but he didn’t feel very well yet. We were to behave, not jump on Daddy or make too much noise. When we arrived at St. Francis, we followed my mother quietly down the hall. She opened the door to his room. It was dark inside. My father never turned on the lights when he was alone. It made no difference to him. My mother turned on the lights.
I didn’t recognize the figure in the bed at first. He lay on his side, small and vulnerable, curled up in the fetal position with his back to us. He looked like he was asleep. My mother touched him gently, and he rolled over and scratched his head like he always did when he was first waking up. Then he turned and sat up on the side of the bed. He was wearing his white underclothes. He sat there quietly for a minute, trying to wake up. I looked around the room. Next to his bed was a desk and chair. His glasses and a turquoise-blue domino holder were sitting on the desk. We all stood back from him, suddenly shy. After a moment my father spoke to us softly, calling us over to him. He gave each of us a hug and talked for a minute. He was very soft-spoken, and in a few minutes he got tired and needed to lie down again. My mother told us it was time to go home and let Daddy rest.
Was this my father? I could hardly believe it. My father was bigger than life, and this man seemed very weak. It would be years before I fully understood how strong my father really was in that moment. He had beaten a twenty-year heroin habit with nothing to help him but his own courage, determination, and love for us. He really was the superman I had imagined him to be when I was small. But in that moment, for the first time in my life, he seemed human.
My father remained in St. Francis for four months. My mother continued to visit him every other day, bringing him home-cooked food as his strength and appetite returned. Every Sunday she brought us to visit. Dad never left the facility, even once, for fear he would be accused of using again. For a long time his blood tests showed positive for heroin, despite the fact that he hadn’t taken any since he was admitted, and he was watched even more closely. Dr. Hacker reassured him that false positives were not unusual, and eventually the tests were negative. Meanwhile, my father came to trust Dr. Hacker and started talking to him about his childhood, about losing his mother and George, about losing his eyesight. Without heroin as a buffer, the memories that haunted him came flooding back. Facing them must have been harder for him than withdrawing from the heroin. He didn’t talk to me about it, and I don’t know that he had any closure on what had happened to George or his mother, but he learned to live with their memories without the use of heroin. During his stay he learned to play chess, a game he embraced with a passion.
The months passed, and at the end of November my father was released from St. Francis to return to Boston and the hearing that would decide his fate. Dr. Hacker testified on his behalf at the hearing, and a letter in support of my father written by the original judge on the case who had since died was read aloud. After considering all of the testimony and evidence, the judge placed my father on probation for five years. He could remain free on his own recognizance as long as he made himself available for random drug testing no matter where he was, on demand of the court. Overwhelmed with gratitude and relief at the decision of the court, my father made the agreement and had it written into his contracts that he could leave any engagement without repercussions if the court so ordered. He was as good as his word. Eventually, he completed his probation. He never used heroin again—he had overcome. My father’s inner strength was unparalleled. God gave him another chance; he would slay his demons and move forward. It was a humbling experience. Only then, my mother says, did she begin to breathe once more.
CHAPTER 9
All Night, All Day
All night, all day,
Angels watchin’ over me,
my Lord.
Bless my home and
family.
Angels watchin’ over me.
—TRADITIONAL AFRICAN
AMERICAN SPIRITUAL
SIX MONTHS AFTER WE MOVED TO VIEW PARK, WE WERE finally able to enjoy our new home. The black smoke over the city gradually dissipated, and my fear faded with it. The National Guard packed up and left. Calm returned to the city and our home. The United States was at war with North Vietnam, racial tension was at an all-time high, and Martin Luther King was marching on Selma, but at home there was peace. The move to Southridge from Hepburn was a new beginning for our family, and a huge relief to me. The walls at Hep
burn had begun to talk to me. They whispered of pain and fear, of my father thrashing and hemorrhaging, of my mother carried down the stairs close to death, of my baby brother stretched lifeless on the floor. I could no longer shut the voices out. The house on Southridge was free of them. Its walls were silent, and when the house did speak, it was of peace and hope.
Our house at the top of the hill was a sanctuary and a refuge. From our vantage point we could see the entire Los Angeles basin spread out beneath us. On hot, muggy days, the smog hovered over the city like a toxic cloud, but when the wind rose, we could see the San Bernardino Mountains. In the afternoons the breeze from the ocean would find its way through the hills of View Park and cool us as we played outside.
Our new home at 4863 Southridge was a monument to my father’s success. The house was designed by the African American architect Arthur Anderson, and his design approach was brilliant. It was illuminated entirely by natural light from large windows and skylights. Instead of building the house three stories up, he built it on three graded levels to fit the natural contours of the landscape. The highest part was even with our neighbors’ houses. We walked in at ground level and then went up or down from there. Altogether there was a drop of about twenty-seven feet from the highest to the lowest level of the house.
The first time my father showed us through our new home, he was more animated than I had ever seen him. Selecting a key from the ring he always carried, he unlocked the door and stood aside to let us enter. As we walked through the entryway, I looked around in wonder. The foyer was marble, flooded with natural light from the surrounding windows. The sheer size of our new home was overwhelming. Our entire house at Hepburn could have fit inside the living room, foyer, and dining room. In the middle of the foyer was a large circular opening cut into the floor, filled with birds-of-paradise, an indoor garden cut into the marble. A staircase carpeted in red swept upstairs from the foyer. My father’s gold records, framed in red velvet with black trim, were displayed on the wall along the staircase. In between the records was a portrait of my parents. Then we entered the living room, which had a ceiling that was nearly twenty feet tall. A beautiful, hand-painted Chinese mural comprised an entire wall, while a second wall was dominated by a huge marble fireplace. We stood there together, marveling at what we saw as my father beamed with pride.
I was standing with the rest of the family, awestruck by what I was seeing, when it suddenly hit me that this was my house. I could go anywhere I wanted. Overwhelmed with excitement, I broke loose from the rest of the family and started running around, looking at everything, wild with curiosity. I raced down the hall and found the den, filled with my father’s trophies and plaques like his old office on Hepburn. His Grammys were encased in a glass-front bookcase, and more gold records lined the wall. I turned and ran down the stairs to the bottom level, where my father’s office was located. Like the rest of the house, it was huge, and the fireplace shaft from the living room ran all the way down one level and opened into a second fireplace in his office. My father’s turntable, speakers, and reel-to-reel tape deck were built into his desk. A large closet housed his tapes and equipment.
The best discovery of all was the entertainment room. The huge marble room—more than 500 square feet—was equipped with everything my brothers or I could want. There was a big color television, a projector, and a movie screen that came out of the ceiling. A built-in jukebox held fifty 45s at a time. It would play all night. There were leather sofas to lounge on, a bar with a soda fountain, and sliding glass doors that opened to a terrace.
Outside the sliding glass doors was our own private playground. There was a tennis court that could double as a basketball court. Next to the court was a fenced-in dog kennel for our German shepherd, King. Best of all, we had our own private swimming pool. It was a large, deep, rectangular pool with a tile mosaic shaped like a piano on the bottom. A hydraulic door made out of marble opened and closed to let the pool cover go forward and retract. In the back was a pool house and storage space for my father’s equipment.
When I finished exploring outside, I raced back inside and up the stairs to find my room. There were six bedrooms on the top level, three in front and three in back. My room was in the front, overlooking the street. My brothers’ and parents’ rooms were in the back. My father had let me walk through the house while it was still being framed, and I chose the bedroom I wanted. Now my bedroom was finished and filled with new furniture.
My father’s pride was visible as we toured our new home that day. Southridge was the fulfillment of a promise my father had made to my mother. To build his family a 12,000-square-foot home in 1965 was a remarkable achievement. He could have purchased a house in Beverly Hills like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or Sammy Davis Jr. if he wanted to, but my parents preferred to raise us within our own culture. My mother wanted us to be around prominent, successful African Americans who could serve as role models for me and my brothers, too. Our home was designed as a personal playground for us where we could do almost anything we wanted without ever having to leave. It was built to ensure the privacy and safety that my parents wanted for us. Everything we needed was within the gates around our property. It was a peaceful place for my mother to nurture and keep watch over us. For a poor, blind African American boy from the South, Southridge was a monumental accomplishment.
When we moved to View Park, we began a way of life that most Americans only dreamed of, a life that few African Americans could even imagine for themselves. During the sixties and seventies, View Park boasted one of the highest per capita incomes in the nation for black families. Though primarily African American, View Park was a mixed neighborhood with white, Asian, and Hispanic families as well, the kind of neighborhood where people stayed. Ours was a beautiful, thriving community on a hill far above the oil wells that led to the beach not far away. There were fields with trails to ride our bikes along and beautiful homes that rivaled almost any in the state. Each afternoon the wind rose from the sea and sent cooling breezes up the hill. Our life there was a beautiful season that we never wanted to end.
Even more important than the affluence or physical beauty of our neighborhood, though, was the sense of community that bound us together. Most of the families who lived in View Park had arrived there through courage and hard work, not through birthright or privilege. They were doctors, executives, judges, attorneys, entertainers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Dr. Harris and his family moved there from Hepburn shortly before we did. Dr. Hill, a dentist, lived across the street. So did the principal of the local school and a district judge. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison owned Harrison-Ross Mortuary. My close friend Gary’s father owned Thompson Trucking. Another neighbor, Jonathan Leonard, was a well-respected black fireman in Los Angeles. There were several successful entertainers as well. Earl Grant, one of the most talented entertainers of his generation, lived down the block. Nancy Wilson lived nearby. So did Ike and Tina Turner.
There was no neighborhood watch, but everyone on the block looked out for one another. Mothers fed each other’s children and called one another if any of the kids were headed for trouble. It was like having several sets of parents. My mother knew that Mrs. Rogers or Mrs. Hill would call if David or I got into trouble, just as they trusted my mother to call if one of their children were in trouble or hurt.
We all lived by the same rules: dinner, homework, home by dark, good sportsmanship, and respect for others. Even our single neighbors took an interest in us. Mr. Grant would stop to talk to us when we were out playing. Mr. Grant was a beautiful man inside and out. He had no children of his own, but he took an interest in us and in his nephews when they came to visit. He was the classiest black man that I’ve ever known, always impeccably dressed. He wore an ascot and velvet shoes just to walk his dog. Mr. Grant drove an old Rolls-Royce Corniche and always greeted me formally in his soft-spoken voice: “Young man, how are you? Have you been behaving yourself?” He was an old bachelor who never married, and many speculated that he was
gay, but it didn’t matter to us. He looked out for us like everyone else did. He was our neighbor, part of the fabric of our lives that kept us close and connected. The bonds that were formed on Southridge have stood the test of time, connecting us to this day. Some in our nation still call John Kennedy’s White House Camelot. Southridge was my Camelot. We were living the dream.
When it was time to play, View Park was a boys’ paradise. Bobby was still too little to come with us, but David and I played together all the time. We remained friends with Anthony and Alfred Anderson, but we didn’t see them very often anymore. We would remain in contact with our other friends in Leimert Park as well. The first person I met when we moved to Southridge was Glen Ford, who became my best friend. We played together every day. Two years later, when the Rogerses moved in, David became best friends with Eric Rogers. David, Eric, Glen, Joey, Carlton, and I were inseparable. Sometimes I got tired of David following me, wanting to do everything I did, but most of the time we got along pretty well. We fought like brothers always do, but we were close.
Our manicured street was just blocks away from undeveloped property along Mt. Vernon. We would crawl through the hedges on Mt. Vernon Drive and go into our own little wilderness. There was nothing but brush and ivy and tall grass, with a little canyon down at the bottom filled with Gila monsters and garden snakes. We would hike and catch snakes and play army. Sometimes we’d collect dirt rocks to throw at cars. We got in big trouble if one of the mothers caught us doing that. At home we rode our skateboards down our long, curved driveway in front of our house. If we made the turn at the bottom of the driveway, the momentum would carry us all the way to the end of the block. If we missed the turn, we would end up sprawled in the grass. We played basketball on the tennis court and football in the street. As we got older, we played street football almost every day. If it was daylight savings time, we were allowed to go out again for a while after dinner if we didn’t have any homework. If we had homework, that was it. And that was it for everybody on the block. No one else went back outside after dinner on a school night. Our mothers wouldn’t let us.
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