Juneteenth, aka June 19th, is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. This week it was designated as a federal holiday. On June 19, 1865, a Union General rode into Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended and slaves had been freed. Today the day is set aside to commemorate when 250,000 enslaved Texans got word they were free. It is also a day to focus on the efforts of social activists to address the reality that globally some 40 million people are still enslaved. Meet a few folks who are doing something about it.

Author Percy Kennedy

Percy is passionate about helping children living in single-parent families, which became his situation when as a sophomore in college at Lamar University on a football scholarship in his hometown of Beaumont, Texas. He recently published Voices of the Fatherless: Letters from Incarcerated Dads Aimed at Breaking the Prison Pipeline. The situation of children raised without a father present in their lives is one of our nation’s most critical and long-running pandemics. We all pay a price for it in terms of social disruptions.

Acting Out In Prison

A few years ago I met Curt Tofteland who founded Shakespeare Behind Bars, an innovative program that works. Nationally the recidivism rate is over 76 percent; among those who participate in Tofteland’s program the rate is only 6 percent. SBB gets men, women and youth to perform plays written by Shakespeare. They rehearse and perform for other inmates, family, and friends while incarcerated. The program is the oldest of its kind in North America. In doing so, they develop life skills that pave the road to success when they are released to rejoin society.

Author Phyllis Brown

Author Phyllis Brown, a retired teacher, focuses her writing passion on telling a more complete version of USA history. The Legacy of the Gold Banded Box  series focuses on a special treasure a young West African girl named Folayan got from her mother, which she passes on to her descendants. Folayan was born in Ghana in 1780, into the Kwantuni family, a family of traveling merchants. She grows to maturity as the age of capturing Africans to enslave and sell in the New World is coming to an end. She hopes she’ll soon know what it is to be in love and live with the man she loves.

Patrick Bailey

Last year author Patrick Bailey wrote a guest blog for me about the vital role father’s play, not only in families, but in society. He stays on top of the latest news from the addiction and the mental health world and writes about these topics to break the stigma associated with them. You can reach him through his website http://patrickbaileys.com.

The Role of Fathers Today

Not that many generations ago families worked more or less together. The majority of families worked the land for a living and crossed paths many times a day in the field or barn or around the kitchen table. Other families ran small business in town, often living above or behind the family business. Children helped parents with all sorts of tasks and were a vital part of a family economic system.

Then we started mass-producing things, built railways to move those things long distances, and started replacing family-owned businesses with companies. The companies merged together to become large corporations. Work obligations started keeping families separated many hours each day. Some of these changes have wrecked havoc on a family’s home life. Too many children grow up barely knowing their fathers. Screen time has replaced the family dinner hour. This is a loss, not only for those children, but also for all of us as a society.

Children need fathers. Yes, there are thousands of single mothers who do a remarkable job of raising their children without fathers around to help. But children still need both male and female people in their lives to learn how to be healthy adults.

Wanted: More Mature Fathers to Mentor Their Children

We need men who read to children and let children read to them, because that strengthens the bonds of caring between people. We need men who will discuss the events of the day with children because that is how children learn values and ethics. We need men who encourage children, who bless them, and assure them – every day in any way they can, that a father is providing emotional care as well as financial care. If you are one of those men – thank you. You are a major part of the solution to most of society’s challenges.

Happy Father’s Day

Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
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Autographed copies available from BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eB00k, and audio.

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Getting It Right

The cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke says, “It’s not about being right. It’s about getting it right.”

Kathryn knew The Mayflower Chronicles required extensive research to ensure the inclusion of everyone’s facts and voices, including the Pokanoket people the Pilgrims confronted upon their arrival in Plymouth. On the other hand, I thought I would write a funny little book about moving in with my father when I was in my early sixties and he—a retired U.S. Army full colonel–was in his eighties.

My real-life and social media friends and followers thought my posts about life with Dad were great. They thought my father and I were hysterical together. They posted about how we were a model adult child/parent combo. Sometimes, they told me my stories made them cry. “You should write a book,” they said. “I wish I could have that kind of relationship with my father,” they told me.

The Incomplete Truth

Based on what they read on my pages, they were right. I wrote humorous, poignant, and sensitive snippets. I programmed tasty and easy to swallow bites on my social media feeds. They only saw what I wanted them to read because I controlled the narrative. I was truthful. But I did not provide all the facts.

I avoided some topics like why I moved in with my Dad, how he knew I needed to before I did, and what it took to realize the shape I was in before making changes.

Before I make it sound like my memoir will reveal deep, dark secrets, let me be transparent. My father was not The Great Santini. My family was ordinary in some contexts and extraordinary in others. Like all families, we had our joys and dysfunctions. But as a military brat, I grew up spending only about fifty percent of my childhood with my Dad around. Then I lived away as adult children tend to do for over 40 years.  So why, when I moved back in with him, was I surprised that we did not know one another as well as I had assumed?

Getting To Know You – Again

Once I moved in with Dad, we started to have tea each afternoon. He began to tell me about his childhood. We shared our memories of the times and places we lived together. We talked about what it was like when he was not with us and stationed far away.

I realized that I did not know as much about him as I thought. He seemed genuinely surprised by many of the things I told him. It took some time before I realized that the personal narrative that I had constructed to explain my life was inaccurate because I did not have all the facts. My story needed some verification.

When an author creates fictional characters, she creates their stories, personalities, triumphs, and traumas. But she must consider each of them within the entire cast of characters she composes. The people in my memoir are not fictional. They have lives, emotions, dreams, and disappointments. There was so much I did not know despite assuming I did. I began to doubt my own story.

Family History

When I confronted the character from the personal narrative I had internalized on my memoir’s pages, she startled me.  Some days I was ashamed. Some days I wanted to be gentler, more compassionate. There were times I laughed at her. And there were times I was proud and amazed that she was still standing. The distance the words on a page must travel to one’s mind and heart allows time to process and distill the truth.

I finished Tea with Dad, sure that I had told the entire story and had all my facts straight. But as fate would have it, I was wrong. As I share in the book, Dad let me know that a family story about my great uncle was not true.

“Uncle Al was not a polygamist. That’s ridiculous,” Dad said. “He had three wives, but not at the same time.”

Family Connections

Last month Uncle Al’s granddaughters, Erin and Eileen, met us for the first time on Zoom. As they compared notes, Dad cleared the air (just in case they were worried, which they were not) by correcting the rumors about Uncle Al.

“He only had three wives,” he told them.

“Oh, there was a fourth one,” our cousin Erin replied. She was so unphased. She went on to let us know that they had documents—the announcement of the annulment of the third marriage and then her grandmother’s divorce papers dated after the annulment announcement.

“There’s a fourth?” Dad asked, surprised. “She slipped in before…”

“My book is wrong!” I gasped.

“A fourth.” Dad was stunned. He shook his head.

“My book is wrong!” I repeated. No one paid any attention to me.

Get It Right – Again

I have decided to view this philosophically. Erin and Eileen provided us with information we did not know. This meant a lot to my father as he was so fond of Uncle Al and his young cousin Jacqueline. There is documentation. We will edit the family story though it is too late for my book.

I did the best I could to get my book right based on the information available to me when I wrote it. History as we know it changes as new evidence appears. As someone else said, “If you don’t get it right the first time, keep trying until you do.”

Tea with Dad is being published by Green Writers Press and is for release April 27, 2021. It is available for pre-order now at Amazon/Laird Young. Nancie lives in Maryland where she writes and continues getting to know her Dad better.

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