A Conversation with the Three Doctors, Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt (continued)

Rameck, you've written, “It's not unusual to hear single mothers say, ‘I don't need a man. I can do bad by myself.’” How did it happen that people stopped expecting men to be full-time devoted dads?

Rameck Hunt: As many others have pointed out, in our culture it started way back when we came to this country as slaves. Bought and sold, bred as cattle—the nuclear family was not part of our experience here. We tried to rebuild the nuclear family and adopt it once we got out of slavery, but the community was so seriously damaged. By the time the 1960s rolled around, things had gotten better. There was a sense of pride in the black community. It was all about getting these things back again, or at least that's what was popular at the time. Everyone wore Afros; the Black Power movement was a potent force; the black female was someone to be respected. Over time, however, the tables turned. Things were different after the riots. Music started to change. Culture started to change. It was okay to be a macho guy. The notion of “How many women can you get?” started to be cool. And all of a sudden women and girls became “bitches” and “ho's,” and misogyny was playing a big part in our culture. People believed that that's what made you a man. And this came from a generation of boys who didn't have fathers at home—boys who did not have nuclear families—who were trying to learn to become men and getting their lessons and messages anywhere they could. It's easy to tear down a foundation when it's already half broken.

Sampson, when the three of you originally envisioned this book, you planned for your fathers to each have their own chapter, so that they could tell their life stories in their own words. That wasn't possible for your dad. Why not?

Sampson Davis: My dad developed two unforgiving diseases—Alzheimer's and Parkinson's—and he deteriorated rapidly within a two-and-a-half-year period. Three years ago he was walking, talking, having full conversations. By the time we got around to writing the book, he was no longer able to tell his own story. He passed away just recently. I've dedicated the book to him, which is kind of ironic. Here I am, talking about fatherlessness and his not being there for me, and yet he's the one to whom I've dedicated this work. That's how much I've come to grips with our relationship. I feel it's something he deserves.

Rameck, in his chapter your father writes about a significant moment: when he wrote you a poem while you were in medical school. Why was that significant for you?

Rameck Hunt: By age twelve I was the caregiver for everyone in my family. I became a surrogate dad to my little sister. Around that time my mom's drug habit got bad, so I became her dad too. And then I became the dad to my dad. Needless to say, I always wanted my parents to get better. Mom consistently denied she had a drug habit. My dad, at least, faced up to it and tried to beat it. He'd go into rehab, kick the drugs, and then, after a time, fall off the wagon. It was a pattern that repeated itself again and again, and it put me on an emotional roller coaster. I'd get my hopes up, my heart would mend, and then it would be ripped open again. Getting that poem from him felt prophetic. I knew deep in my soul that this time he was going to make it. I knew he was never going to relapse again. And I was right, he never did. The poem was also significant because in it he asked for my forgiveness and expressed how sorry he was that he hadn't been there for me. Although I never really felt he had anything to apologize for, it was a lovely gesture. That's one of the hang-ups George still has with his dad. To this day he has never apologized.

While working on this book, what did you learn about your fathers that you didn't already know? And what did it feel like to learn it for the first time?

George Jenkins: I learned a lot about his family, his own experience with fatherlessness, and how that affected his choices with me. His mother was a widowed schoolteacher, and his father was the married proprietor of the town's general store. In small-town rural South Carolina that sort of thing would set tongues wagging. On top of that, his mother already had six other children and worked two jobs trying to keep things afloat. She sent my infant dad off to another town to be cared for by a couple she was friends with. Although my dad and his father saw each other occasionally, his father was never a big part of his life. And on those occasions when he did make overtures to his son, his wife made it clear she wasn't happy he had “stepped out” on her. She went out of her way to humiliate my dad. I'm sure that had an impact on how he dealt with me. When I heard this story, it knocked down even more walls between us and allowed us to start forging a relationship with each other.

Sampson Davis: I never knew my roots from my father's side of the family, so traveling down the road of his history was by far one of the best experiences I've ever had. I learned, among other things, that there was a strong thread connecting the Davis men in the public record. For example, by the late 1880s—according to the census—my great-grandfather, a child when slavery ended, had become a property owner. He eventually gave his firstborn son, my grandfather, some land so he could raise crops and start building his own family. And for a while the two men lived next to each other. These were guys who had large families and were heads of their households. They were not men who shirked their responsibilities.

I also learned that my dad was big on academics and education. I knew he had enlisted in the army and served in World War II, but I imagined him as this stoic, no-frills lieutenant. It turns out he was anything but that. He was quite a prankster—a side of him I'd never seen—easygoing and laid-back. He was a self-taught musician who loved playing his guitar. He was outgoing, adventurous, fun-loving, and lighthearted. I found that very surprising. In fact I was shocked. It was thrilling to see he had this personality I never knew of. I was also stunned to learn of how he courted my mom. The quintessential traditionalist, he asked her dad for permission to start seeing her. It was great to learn that he had had that kind of respect. They slipped away to another town to marry in secret (she was fifteen, he was twenty-one or twenty-two). He continued to “court” my mom on weekends, and eventually her dad grew very fond of him. When she became pregnant a year later, they finally went to live under the same roof. They settled in Newark, and those early years were a blissful time in their marriage. My oldest brother remembers the time well—filled with family outings to the park, father-and-son visits to the neighborhood boys' club, loving embraces, and much more. I wish more than anything that I had been born in time to witness those years.

My dad's one Achilles' heel showed later in life, when the marriage fell apart. He tried to hold on to the relationship, even though it had become cancerous and he no longer knew how to make it work.

Rameck Hunt: I thought I knew a lot of my family's history, but in fact I knew only what was on the surface. I never fully understood how tough my father's mother made it for my mom. Everyone in the family has confirmed that my paternal grandmother really didn't care for my mom and didn't want me around. There was a time when she wouldn't even acknowledge me as her grandson, and when that acknowledgment did come, it was grudging at best. (My half sister, on the other hand, was doted on.)

I already knew a bit about how my dad got hooked on heroin, but I learned more of the details once I started researching the book. I learned about how he came home from college that fateful winter of his freshman year, searched out his old friends—guys who had already started shooting up—and became an addict himself. From the moment he tried it, and for the next thirty years, he chased that high, and he ended up throwing his life away.

One thing I found really scary is that although I don't look like my dad, and although I hadn't spent as much as a forty-hour week with him during my entire childhood, I'm his spitting image character-wise. We both have the same loving heart. We both went through a phase in which we wanted to be accepted by our friends. We both love kids and love to play with kids. We both like to be silly. We're both introspective and like to express ourselves. We're both deep thinkers. I saw in me everything he described about himself in his chapter. The fact that I'd spent so little time around him growing up and yet was so like him truly amazed me.

Is there a common denominator to be found in the stories of your fathers?

Sampson Davis: An intergenerational legacy of fatherlessness seemed to wrap itself around all our fathers, snuffing out their ability to be devoted dads. Just as our fathers weren't in our lives, their fathers weren't in their lives. Like so many other men without a role model to show them how to be a strong co-parent, our fathers weren't able to figure the puzzle out on their own.

The Bond is written from a male perspective. Is it strictly for fathers and sons?

Sampson Davis: No. Regardless of whether you're a boy or a girl, growing up fatherless profoundly affects the development of your self-esteem, your sexual behavior, your ability to form relationships, and so on. Some girls I knew growing up didn't know how to form relationships. They thought being sexual was the way to connect with a man. They figured that if they gave of themselves sexually it would keep that man in their lives and prevent him from running out as their fathers had. The difference in how they behaved when they had fathers in their lives was obvious. They seemed stronger and less naive. They didn't cave in. Their attitude seemed to be: “This is my stance, this is what I believe in.” The message here, for all parents, is that they have to be involved in the lives of their children. They need to go to their recitals and parent-teacher days; pick them up from school and take vacations with them; talk about the concerns that are part of their daily lives: peer pressure, friendships, alcoholism, anything and everything. It can't be said enough: Parents need to realize how vital it is that they take an active role in the lives of their children.

Rameck Hunt: I know many women who see a clear connection between the relationships they had with their fathers and bad love relationships or troubling behaviors on their part later in life. I wrote a chapter for the book called “Daddy's Little Girl,” based on interviews I conducted with a number of women, and others done by our collaborator, Margaret Bernstein. We explored, among other things, father-daughter relationships, and the theory that a father is his daughter's first male love and that this affects her future relationships with men. Unfortunately, as we went through the editing process we realized the chapter didn't quite flow with the rest of the material; still, we used sections of it in the prologue and the postscript. This book was written from a male perspective, but it's absolutely meant to be inclusive. We're convinced every father and mother, every son and daughter, will get a lot from it.

You offer ideas that readers can put to work immediately to reduce the harm done by absentee dads and to welcome missing fathers back into children's lives. What are the most important of these suggestions?

George Jenkins: The most important piece of advice I can think of is to make sure you don't harbor ill feelings toward your absentee father. If you don't put those ill feelings aside and move forward, they'll stay with you and eat you alive. It's also important that you surround yourself with people you can learn from, talk to, and open up with. Without Sam and Rameck, this would have been a decidedly unpleasant journey.

Sampson Davis: For me, the most important piece of advice is that you take that first step. Many of my friends bemoan the fact that they have no relationship with their fathers; they're always telling me they wish things were different. But they also refuse to reach out to their dads. They come up with one excuse after another. I tell them that they need to express what they feel, but that they shouldn't necessarily look for a response. When you hold those feelings in and don't express them, and then you expect your dad to do something, you're going to lose him and you're going to be disappointed. The two of you will sit at opposite sides of the table with your poker faces on. You'll think you've won, but in fact you've lost. Whether it's the parent or the child, mother or daughter, father or son, someone has to be the bigger person. And do it now, today! Don't wait until tomorrow. When I finally did make that move, it was too late.

Rameck Hunt: It's perhaps a bit strange for this to come from someone who is not yet a father. The key point I'd like to make is that you're cheating yourself when you miss out on the joys you receive from watching your kids grow: having them hold on to you, secure in the knowledge that you're their protector; seeing them take their first steps; hearing them say “Mama” or “Dada” for the first time. My dad can't say he had anything to do with my success other than providing half my genes. That kind of thing just kills you inside. Think about the consequences of missing out on those milestones in the life of your child.

What can be done to stem the tide of fatherlessness in the kinds of inner-city communities you three came from?

George Jenkins: The most important thing we can do is create a discussion and hope some good comes from it. We need to talk to young men and boys and help them understand the importance of fatherhood; help them focus on it, and awaken in them dormant paternal instincts. A lot of teenagers and young men don't even want to discuss it. That needs to change. And we need to put more effort into mending family relationships that have gone bad and into reconnecting absentee fathers with their sons and sons with their absentee fathers.

What do you think will most surprise readers of this book?

George Jenkins: Some readers may get the sense that we've mended our relationships with our fathers. It may surprise them to know that we've only begun that process. For me, in particular, the book is what started the healing; it's what got my dad and me talking to each other. But this is not an “A-to-Z Guide” for mending father-son relationships. It's a work in progress rather than one that is finished.

Sampson Davis: I think readers will be surprised that we're not bitter and that we were able to find some sort of victory in all this. When you pick up a book about fatherlessness, you might think it will involve father-bashing. That's not what we're about. In this book you get stories that are heartfelt, funny, sad, and dramatic. At the same time, you're going to feel inspired and motivated. I think readers will be surprised that this can serve as a blueprint to help them in their father-son relationships. People who had been disconnected from their dads have told us our book made them want to reconnect. That's one of the things we're trying to accomplish.

Rameck Hunt: I think readers will be surprised that we're as open and honest as we are. People who have read The Pact already know that about us. But they may be surprised that we took a different perspective here. We didn't just tell the story of our relationship with our fathers. We also had our fathers tell their own stories in their own voices.

Has each of you reconciled with your father? If so, how difficult was that process?

George Jenkins: I don't know where the final destination of reconciliation will be, but we're light-years from where we were. We now talk fairly often and care enough to keep up-to-date with what's going on in each other's lives. That alone is a pretty important step. (I used to have to call my mom every time I wanted to contact my dad, because I refused to keep his number.) Sadly, he now has prostate cancer. Even though I'm a dentist, I'm deep enough in the medical field to be able to provide some support for him. That too is helping us come full circle.

Sampson Davis: In his later years—because of his Alzheimer's and Parkinson's—I wasn't able to talk to Pop or have one-on-one discussions with him, but I'm happy I was there when he was going through his illness. It would have been easy to say, “He wasn't there for me, so I'm not going to be there for him.” But that would have robbed me of something.

Sampson, like Rameck and George, you say you wanted this book to address your unanswered questions. And yet you write that in your hearts of hearts you knew your father wouldn't be able to answer them, even if he had been healthy and whole. Why not?

Sampson Davis: I wanted to know whether or not he loved me. I wanted to know whether I ever did anything wrong. I wanted to know why we didn't do things together, and why he didn't open up more, and what I could have done to make that happen. I had tried broaching these subjects with him in the past—sending him cards and flattering letters—but it just didn't work. I would say, “Hey, I love you, Dad,” and he'd stay silent. He was simply unable to express his feelings that way. Because of this, I don't think this book would have made a difference. At his funeral someone showed me a résumé I had put together ten years ago, when I was in medical school. Dad had made copies of it and sent it to family members down South. Clearly he was proud of me, but he couldn't voice it. Part of me has had to say, “That's okay. That's who he was.”

What do you want readers to get out of this book?

George Jenkins: We hope they'll be inspired by our experiences and that they'll think about the positive things that can come out of trying to mend relationships with their fathers, with both their parents. We hope they'll figure out a way to bond within themselves as a way of starting that process. Above all, we want tighter families to serve as better examples for the next generation, so they'll have less trouble than we had. It all begins with mending those relationships now.

Rameck Hunt: We want readers to have hope. We want all fathers to become better fathers, all parents to become better parents. We hope those who have absented themselves in any way from their children's lives will reestablish relationships with their sons and daughters, and that those who are still in the home but having trouble will do a better job. We want this book to be a catalyst for change for everybody—black and white, rich and poor, from all walks of life. We hope it will make parents and kids reevaluate their relationships with each other. That's what we want the book to spark.