Since I was a sophomore at a Milwaukee high school in March 1972, I knew I wanted to become a nationally known sports journalist.
Talk about bizarre.
Outside of wishing to become president of the United States, that was an ambitious (maybe ridiculous) goal back then for a Black teenager regarding an overwhelmingly White profession.
I reached that goal, though.
Not only that, but with much help from my parents, my love for Jackie Robinson and his autobiography I Never Had It Made, and a slew of other folks, I soared way behind that goal.
Regarding those “other folks,” I give special thanks…
To Clara Flores, Oren Miller Sr., Phillip Pluister, Mary Griesbach, and James Stabenaw, my favorite teachers and/or coaches through the years.
To all of those friends, acquaintances, and associates who answered the phone whenever I needed to vent about my racial horrors as the first Black sports columnist in the history of the Deep South.
To my colleagues during the mid-to-late 1970s at The Miami Student newspaper at Miami (Ohio) University, where we got on-the-job training as journalists while functioning as an unofficial fraternity.
To great-grandfather Charles H. Graham, who died when I was 10 at the age of 111, and whose stories about functioning as a water boy during the Civil War and other memories of segregated Mississippi helped turn me into a lover forever of storytelling and history.