A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches,
and favor is better than silver or gold.
—Proverbs 22:1 (ESV)
Who am I?
“Excuse me, sir, but I think you look a little bit like Mr. BeBe Winans.”
“Yes, sir,” I reply, extending my hand to the gentleman on the park bench. “And how are you today, sir?”
“I’ll shake your hand, if that’s all right.”
“Of course.”
We shake hands. He grabs my arm at the elbow and smiles. “A pleasure, Mr. BeBe.”
That’s who I am. Mr. BeBe. Or Benjamin, as my brothers and sisters call me. Although they call me BeBe as well.
Benjamin Winans. That’s the name on my driver’s license. But what’s in a name? Quite a lot, these days. Your name is your brand, some say. But I’m not Nike or Starbucks; I’m not an organization that needs to form some kind of identity in order for people to buy what it’s selling. I’m a human being. And this particular human being believes that my name is a way to identify the person God created me to be. My identity as a man, a friend, a father, is first found in Christ Jesus. No branding needed, thank you very much.
And yet my name is more than a simple identifier. God takes names seriously. He liked to rename people in the Bible. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham. The name “Abram” meant “high father.” But the name “Abraham” meant “father of many nations.” And that’s what God intended for Abraham—to be the father of many nations. God said that His descendants would outnumber the stars. So, in God’s naming economy, a name signified a new identity. He did the same thing in the New Testament to Simon. He changed his name to Peter, which meant “rock.” And He said, “Upon this rock, I will build my church.” Names matter to God. When I think of my name, I think of my purpose and I think of my family.
I didn’t think much of my name when I was younger. I was just plain old Benjamin. And Winans wasn’t anything special to me. It was just my last name. I didn’t realize the importance of a name until I was much older. In fact, I’m still learning about my name, Winans. Once I was sitting with my nephew at lunch. He and I were eating lunch with my mother—his grandmother—Mom Winans. It came up that Mom had written a book years earlier. My nephew couldn’t believe it.
“Grandma, you wrote a book?”
Then he discovered she played basketball.
“You played basketball?”
Then he found out she was nominated for a Grammy.
“Grandma, who are you? You were nominated for a Grammy?”
A friend was sitting with us, and he piped up and said, “Better learn about your grandmother, son. And about your own name, Winans.”
It’s true, though. When you’re young, you really don’t know anything about who you are, let alone the legacy of your name. And this word “legacy”—it is not reserved for successful people or families with long bloodlines or the rich and famous. We all leave a legacy—every person, no matter their station in life. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or to what religion you ascribe or the color of your skin; every person lives a life, and so every person leaves a trail of that life behind them. That’s a legacy. I wish the younger generations would take pride in their personal legacy. I want them to understand that their legacy is about more than just their own life; it’s about how their life touches others; it’s about family; it’s about what you leave behind for your family and your friends.
But I didn’t know any of this when I was a kid. What I knew about my name came to me from my immediate surroundings, which was my siblings and Mom and Dad. It wasn’t until later on in my life, when I became a young man, that I discovered that I wasn’t born a Winans. And it was one of those things I discovered over time by observing our family.
“Now wait a second,” I thought to myself. “Why do we have three sets of grandparents?” It wasn’t one of those things people talked about in the church. No one said, “Now listen, my young little BeBe: your real grandparents had your dad out of wedlock.” Oh no. God forbid the adults tell us the truth up front. They made us dig for it.
Now, I’m no historian, but I do know my family, thanks to the memories of my mother and my siblings. And as I walk you through my history, I’ll lean on their knowledge and experiences to help spark my own.
The beginning is a very good place for me to start, but that’s not everyone’s story. My childhood, by every account, was a blessing. I was fortunate to have two parents in the household: a loving mother, Delores Amelia Glenn, who was born in Delray, Michigan—that’s southwest Detroit, down river—and a hard-working, stern, but loving father, David Glenn, who was born in Detroit. Later in life people called him Pops, but for most of his life his close friends and elders called him Skippy. We called him Daddy, if we wanted to keep our teeth.
Early in his childhood, one of the ladies in his church nicknamed him Skippy when he was just a baby, and it stuck. My father was strict and funny at the same time. You may think the last name is wrong, but let it be known I was born a Glenn, not a Winans.
Laura Glenn gave birth to my father in 1934 at Parkside Hospital in Detroit. But there’s more to the story than just Dad being born.
Laura was sixteen when she had my dad. Dad’s father, Carvin Winans, was much older than Laura. Carvin denied that the baby was his. Maybe because the baby was born out of wedlock, who knows. This denial caused Laura to endure a good bit of pain and embarrassment. When asked who the father was, she replied, “Carvin Winans is the father.”
But Carvin would not admit it. Laura, however, did not change her story. She stuck to it.
“You’ll see, when the baby gets born,” she said.
Carvin’s father, I.W. Winans, told Carvin that he would have no more children because he’d curse himself by denying that Dad was his child. And the scary thing is, Carvin never had any more children after Dad.
So the child, my father, took on Glenn, his mother’s last name. Laura struggled with the reality that she’d have to bring up young David on her own. But Clare Glenn and David Glenn Sr., who were Dad’s grandparents on his mother’s side, reassured Laura.
“Don’t worry about the child,” they said. “He will be taken care of. We will help you raise him.”
Dad grew up mostly in the company of women after Carvin refused to accept that the baby was his. Laura and Clare took on most of the responsibilities of raising Dad.
It was widely known that when Dad was a little boy, he liked to act like his grandfather I.W. Winans, whom most referred to as Elder Winans. Elder Winans was a preacher at the Mack Avenue Church of God in Christ. And apparently, so was Dad. At least he acted like one.
One of Dad’s cousins says their grandmother kept Dad in church when he was young. Which might explain his acting like a preacher. So, to play a joke once, they built a podium out of orange crates. And Skippy, well, Dad, stood up on the podium and preached, with his cousins and little friends acting as his “hallelujah section.” Dad did his best to preach just like Elder Winans preached. Dad was also known as one of those boys always getting into some kind of trouble. (Dad never mentioned that much growing up. Can’t let the kids know you were a troublemaker growing up—oh, Lord no.)
As Dad got older, he turned into a handsome man. And that’s not only me saying so—that’s what he’d tell you if he were here. He knew he had it going on. He’d probably tell you that he was always handsome—that it didn’t just come upon him when he became a teenager. I guess that’s what gave him some of the charm that everyone loved about him.
And as he was her only child, his mother used to spoil him with good clothes so that he always looked sharp. And the ladies took notice. He always looked good during his high school years.
It was in his teen years that Dad met my mom, Delores.
Mom and Dad started singing and playing the piano when they were very young. They first met in the Lucylle Lemon Gospel Chorus in 1950; Mom was about thirteen years old, and Dad was fifteen. Dad joined when his mother, Laura, did. She brought Dad along because she didn’t want to leave Dad home alone. My mom played piano for the group. She was young, eleven or twelve, when she first joined. She ended up playing and singing for over ten years with the chorus.
They toured nationally, so there was some cache to that. People knew them across the country. But not like in Detroit. In Detroit, the chorus were revered. People called Lucylle the “Doll of Gospel Music.” It was an outlet for young singers and musicians to work on their craft. It was a symbol of opportunity, a pathway to the fulfillment of a young person’s dreams.
But don’t let the word “Gospel” in the name fool you. Not everyone was “saved” in the chorus, as Dad once put it. Many of the performers traveled and sang the Gospel songs because they just wanted to sing. Anyone could join the Lemon Gospel Chorus. It was a community choir, so it didn’t matter what church you attended, or didn’t attend; you could sing if you wanted to.
Dad remembers that one church did not invite them back because someone in the chorus was seen smoking a cigarette on one of their breaks. That was a big no-no in most churches during that time.
At one point during their time together in the Lemon Gospel Chorus, Mom says Dad was sweet on her and wanted to date her. Mom was a tough one. She told Dad he had to win her over. She knew that Dad was a ladies’ man, so she made him work to win her heart.
Being in the choir was like a ladies’ playground for Dad. He’d “go with” two or three girls at a time, as Mom recalls. And they knew he was dating all of them because they’d get together and talk about it. But Dad would tell you that he wasn’t saved back then. He was just part of the choir, singing and enjoying the company of the ladies. I suppose in his eyes, they were better off getting a piece of him than none at all.
When it came to Mom and Dad eventually getting married, Dad remembers that he had “another choice.” So how did he decide which girl to marry? He relied on his mom to give him guidance on the issue. And his mom told him that Delores, my mom, would be the best wife for him. He listened to his mom. Mom and Dad dated for three years and married in 1953. She was seventeen and he was nineteen! Remember that number—seventeen—for later on when someone else wants to get married young.
Naturally, when Dad married Mom, she became a Glenn and the first seven children she birthed were Glenns. I was the seventh son of the clan of ten. Seven boys, then three girls after me. The first girl was Priscilla Marie Winans, better known as CeCe. At the beginning, we were the Glenn family.
Dad left the Lemon Gospel Chorus for the very important reason that he couldn’t see himself wearing a robe. He left and started his own group, a quartet called the Nobelaires. In one of their first shows Dad recalls their opening song was “Somebody Knows When I Am Tempted.” And yet even though Dad was singing about being tempted, he still hadn’t fully given his life to Christ. But that was about to change.
One day, standing in the Parkside projects on the northeast side of Detroit, Dad felt the spirit of God move him. He’d tell you he still wasn’t saved, but he felt God tell him that he needed to attend his grandfather’s church. His grandfather was I.W. Winans, the bishop of Mack Avenue Church of God in Christ.
Dad recalls that it wasn’t long after he experienced that feeling that someone told him there was going to be a meeting at the Mack Avenue church. A lady preacher was speaking, and it was widely rumored that she had the power of God in her life. Dad wanted to see what it was all about. So he attended the meeting, and when there was an invitation to come forward, Dad got out of his pew, went down the aisle, and stood in line.
“I didn’t know what hit me,” he says. “One minute I was standing there in the line, and the next minute, after the holy sister had laid hands on me, I was sprawled out on the floor.”
Dad experienced the power of God profoundly that night. And things changed almost immediately in his heart. After that experience, he lost interest in the Nobelaires.
“I just wanted to be where the saints of God was testifying and glorifying God,” he said.
It was after that experience that Dad began regularly attending his grandfather’s church. I.W. Winans became Dad’s pastor. Now, don’t forget. At this point, Dad is still named David Glenn.
Dad’s desire to be like the other singers, the other quartets in the area, disappeared. That competitive nature that so defined the music culture back then in the Detroit of his youth? Dad no longer wanted it. He only desired to be in church, to be experiencing God in powerful ways, and he attributed that to the guidance of I.W. Winans.
Stepping out of the popular music environment of the area was a countercultural thing for Dad to do. The guys in the quartet all attended church, and yet their lives did not necessarily reflect a changed lifestyle. But Dad insisted that he wanted to attend his grandfather’s church—a holiness church. And when you attended a holiness church, there was no smoking, or drinking, or running the streets; there was no gambling. You didn’t lead one life on the street and then another at church. It was wholesale transformation. So Dad left the Nobelaires and accepted Christ as his savior.
After Dad left his group, he decided to start a choir. And it’s funny to me to hear some of the testimonies of some of the people who sang in it. Mostly because I’m not surprised one bit by their stories.
They described Dad as very demanding. Check!
Better than anyone else. Check.
Could do whatever he wanted. Check.
That was my dad. He was demanding, and he was good, and he wasn’t shy about his gift. He was forceful because he was a force himself. And he’d get the best out of you by demanding the most from you.
They never rehearsed in the church but always at one of the choir members’ home, at least early on. I love how Dad described how that early choir performed: “I didn’t get up in front and direct, like choir directors do with their choirs today. No. Our choir was a family. We sang, prayed, ate together, and sang together.”
Dad described their music community in the choir as a spiritually organic group. That choir did everything together, even fasted together. Fellowship defined their meetings and even their life outside of meetings.
“That kind of fellowship only comes from the love of God,” Dad would say. “And it’s a blessed thing.”
And from that kind of love and togetherness came a glorious sound, according to my dad. I believe him.
And it wasn’t only Dad getting involved and leading the music. He and Mom worked at it together. Dad led the song while Mom played the piano. And the group sang in the Spirit.
Dad was fond of this saying by his pastor, I.W. Winans: “You can’t lead the Spirit of God; you’ve got to be led by the Spirit of God.”
To put it simply, Dad just led the group up onstage and he’d start them singing, but that was it. They just sang. But it was singing in the Spirit of God—that’s a different kind of singing, one you can’t fabricate. It must come from the fellowship of the saints.
It was during those days when Dad was leading the choir that his mom, Laura, fell away from the church. But he and my mom, and those first handful of children, had remained in the church and under the leadership of I.W. Winans. I.W. grew attached to Dad’s seven sons. And he began to consider the fact that there were no Winans grandsons. Irvin Winans, Carvin’s brother, had a girl, and after Dad was born, Carvin didn’t have any more children.
On December 16, 1963, I.W. approached his son Carvin to ask him to see if my dad would change his name from Glenn to Winans. Surprisingly, Carvin made the request to my dad on behalf of I.W., in order to assure that his name would continue after he died. I was one year old at the time.
But Carvin failed to convince my dad to change his name. It was left to I.W. to do the convincing. Dad’s relationship with Carvin Winans was strained due to the fact that Carvin hadn’t been in his life much, so it wasn’t a surprise that he failed. But Dad’s relationship with I.W. was solid, and he convinced my dad to change his name to Winans. He even said he’d pay for all the children to have their names legally changed.
But Dad needed to talk with his mother, Laura, and with my mom about it. He needed to give it some thought. Mom was happy to do it, and Laura seemed to think it was fine. So Skippy and Delores changed our family’s name from Glenn to Winans.
And yet even though Mom was happy to do it, and Dad, who never held a grudge, agreed to do it, I can’t imagine how that must have made my grandmother Laura feel. And what about Laura’s parents? They helped Laura raise Dad. Laura’s mother, Clare, basically raised my dad until he was seven years old, when she died.
I spoke with my cousin Gwen about it to see if she could shed any light on the Glenns’ true feelings. Gwen was Laura’s niece. Gwen and my father were thick as thieves because they grew up together, so when my father passed, as much as we worried about my mother, we also worried about Gwen because of how close they were. And though Gwen didn’t live in the area at the time, she told me that Laura had, indeed, been upset about the whole thing and that the Glenns as a family felt the sting of the situation as a kind of betrayal.
She reminded me that Laura had been only sixteen when she became pregnant, and at that time in our culture, that carried a lot of shame. And she was stuck not only with the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock but also saddled with caring for her son on her own. It was a Godsend that Clare and her husband were there to help her raise my dad.
The Glenns, as I discovered, viewed I.W.’s actions as an affront to them and their efforts to care for Dad. They saw it as I.W. simply wanting to secure the Winans name because, as my mom liked to say, “I.W. loved him some Skippy.” To the Glenns, it was offensive for Carvin, who early on had always denied the child was his, to suddenly be given a brood of seven young boys to carry on the family name. He did nothing to deserve it. In fact, he’d done the complete opposite.
It wasn’t as if it was one discussion with my dad either, and I think that’s how I initially thought it happened. But the Glenns claimed that the Winanses talked Dad into it, they convinced him with sly arguments—things like, “David, you’re living a lie because you’re really a Winans.” All because they wanted grandsons.
There are always two sides to every story. And the story of the Glenns and the Winanses proves that to me. I’ve never thought about the pain or shame that Laura must have endured until recently. I’ve never thought about how it must have felt to raise a child, who assumed your name because the father refused to claim his own son, and then have that very child cast off your name in favor of his “real” name, until now. They are painful thoughts.
But at the time, my dad was a grown man and he could make his own decision, and everyone knew and everyone respected that, though clearly not everyone agreed with it.
I suppose Dad could have felt betrayed by his father, Carvin. And maybe he would have had those feelings when he was younger. But Dad recalls that when I.W. approached him, he felt no ill will toward Carvin. He didn’t hold a grudge even though no one would fault him for doing so. Dad believed that the most important legacy to leave in this world was the legacy of forgiveness. Dad believed that God blessed his act of forgiveness by blessing the name Winans.
“It is quite remarkable when I think about our family being an entire family of singers,” he’d say. And it’s now more than just our immediate family—the blessing of song and singing now extends to three generations. Could it be that the blessing of God extended to all the children, and the children’s children, and on and on, just because Dad didn’t hold a grudge? I can’t say for certain, but I don’t doubt it. God, I’ve discovered, is a God of blessing, of keeping His word, of letting His favor fall on whole families.
My perspective is not my dad’s. I did not live through all the things he lived through. And it’s fair to say his Detroit was not my Detroit. I grew up in a much different environment than he did. Though I know the story of being born a Glenn, I’ve known myself to be a Winans since as long as I can remember. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to realize that your father denied you when you were a baby. And I can only imagine the kind of grace that has to exist in a person’s heart to not hold a grudge over that. And that’s a humbling thought.
Dad not only loved Gospel music, he loved the message. It came from his heart. Anyone who ever saw my dad perform live knows he put everything he had into his performances. If Dad was singing, you’d better hold on. And it wasn’t all show—it was passion. And like Mom, he was a man of many talents. He also played the saxophone and the clarinet in the traveling chorus.
But once us kids came along, Dad quit singing out in groups. He didn’t sing professionally again for another thirty years. Dad did what he had to do in order to support our family. And he had to. When it was all said and done there were ten of us siblings: David Jr., Ronald, Carvin and Marvin (they’re fraternal twins), Michael, Daniel, and me—Benjamin. Then the girls showed up. First Priscilla Marie—though you know her as CeCe—followed by Angelique Lynette and Debra Renee. Our parents had their hands full.
Dad worked hard. And he worked all kinds of jobs. From a taxi driver to a car salesman to working at the Dodge plant in the early 1960s. He began preaching in 1969, though he would tell you he heard the call to preach before that but flatly ignored it.
Mom and Dad had their own dreams. But sometimes your dreams have to take a back seat to the reality of life. And life doesn’t care if it shatters your dreams. It just keeps moving. You have to adapt and continue, or you’ll find yourself strapped down by your own disappointment. And Mom wasn’t going to let disappointment settle in. That kind of disappointment would have spelled trouble for her marriage and her family. Besides, there were other things in life that were worthwhile. She knew and believed in the value of music and in the value of work, and the two are not mutually exclusive. She and Dad drilled that into our hearts. We’ve all inherited it.
* * *
We all inherit values and characteristics from our parents. But some things in life you discover; they aren’t inherited or instilled. I consider the Winans name a wonderful blessing from God, as Dad did. Names are important. They carry with them the legacy associated with the many lives intertwined in that name.
But the Winans name didn’t just end with the saga of my dad’s past with Carvin and I.W. That’s only one glimpse in time of a name that goes back much further than I realized.