Doku. (“The father died.”) Sometimes when you speak, you hear an echo of all those who told you it before. Sometimes when you listen, you can hear drums. Sometimes when you put on an outfit—a disguise, really—you remember all the roles that had been played by those actors before you joined the scene.

For too many people, history begins when they begin paying attention. In many ways, history began for me when I met several individuals between 14 and 17. One of them was Erwin Ponder.  He became one of my surrogate fathers. Out of all of them, he was the most unusual.

Babafemi. (“Father loves me.”) He was always busy. I didn’t care; being lonely and hungry for information, I took all the time he had, and then some. You had to pay attention to what he was saying, because he could be making a joke, a gentle one at your expense. But he was much more serious than he let on. He knew much more than he let on—about history, and the Bible, the Nation of Islam, and the Qur’an. He would tell me things that I would take years, and several degrees, to understand. I was amazed to read about his youth in Newark in that Geraldo Rivera book, “Special Kind of Courage.” Did he ever show you that? Did he ever tell you he could draw? It took years for him to let those things slip out.

As I got older, he got more unusual. While I was in college, he would be an Upward Bound administrator in the morning and then be serving dinner as part of the University’s food serving staff in the afternoon! Before going to his third job, running a video store! In between all of that, he was a Q, a Mason, a Gospel choir manager, and who-knows-what-else! I’m sure he never told you this, but somehow he found time to spend half my senior year making sure I didn’t flunk out of Seton Hall. And I sure tried.

He seemed to never get credit for all of this. Not even from me! He told me that the only responsibility I had to him was to pass on the information to the next generation.

Asante Sana, Babatunde. (“Thank you, Father Who Has Returned!”) I decided a long time ago that I was going to be unusual, and I still am. And I will pass along the information, hearing echoes and drums and his voice from the Realm of the Ancestors and, hopefully, seeing possibilities.