Amazing Journey

What a week - it's gone by fast and furious. Yesterday (Thursday) I got everything together and I sent a copy of a photograph of the young Jewish boy named Paul to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Sara is their person who researches these types of request and she has all the information I know about Paul. Say a prayer for her and for Roy - that the doors would open for him to meet with Paul again and find his peace.

On Tuesday I went to Rock Island HS where I met with a group of kids from the Special Education Department. They will be writing and illustrating the first set of Civil Rights stories for me. They will write about two local people who were proactive in the Civil Rights movement and famous people like Rosa Parks, Emmitt Till, General Benjamin David (Commander of the famous Tuskegee Airmen), etc.

The students are amazed at these stories and they are becoming "real" to them. That is my hearts desire - for them and their young readers to have this experience where it becomes real to their hearts and minds. Many fought for their rights to be educated and get a good job - now use the gifts and talents God has given you and go for it!

My new best friend is Bernice Jones who is one of the most real and transparent people I know. She went from the MOP TO THE TOP (which will be the name of her book, by the way). Her story follows (I know this is too long for a BLOG but it's too good not to tell too!

Blessings from Debbow
Bernice Jones

Bernice was born in Princeton, Illinois near the Lovejoy Underground Railroad. When she was young, her family moved to Joliet, Illinois. Her mother was an alcohol and left her father (a World War I veteran) who had abusive tendencies. Bernice decided at age sixteen to run away to stay with her Grandmother in East Moline, Illinois. Bernice’s mother was in East Moline also and they were able to build a relationship. Bernice fell in love and married but soon afterward her husband found out news he was adopted and went crazy. She wasn’t going to live with abuse so she picked up and moved back to Joliet where she became the city’s first female cab driver.
When she returned to the Quad Cities, she married again – this time to a good husband - and the couple was blessed with two sons. Sadly, her husband passed away and Bernice’s dreams were shattered once again. As a widow of a veteran of World War II she had first rights to jobs at the Rock Island Arsenal. Early in her career, Bernice worked as a janitor at the Arsenal. She asked permission and was able to take old Army Regulation books home to read at night.
She was not satisfied doing this type of work but knew it would take action on her part to change it. She worked hard to earn her GED or high school equivalency. This education and her hard work allowed her to climb the ladder of success and becoming the Equal Opportunity Officer at the Rock Island Arsenal.
In her own words Bernice shares: I went to a lady and asked about taking a Bible study and she cried. She was thirty-seven years old, has seven children and she said “I cannot read”. Oh she had her diploma but she still couldn’t read. This should not be happening in the 21st century. I am now tutoring this young lady and you cannot imagine how she has grown to realize she can formulate words and sentences. But that’s where we need to be… where the need is. We need to come out of our comfort zones. Come out of our comfort zones, look around. Many people are like, I call them can sitters. They get all they can, can all they get and sit on the can. They don’t do nothing for nobody. And it is time out, time out for can sitters. They need to get up, stand up, lead out, even if nobody else will follow. You need to take the initiative. If you see the need, then you need to take the initiative to do something. Cause if you wait on somebody else, somebody’s going to try to discourage you. “Oh girl you know, you don’t have no degree. You don’t have no degree. You didn’t go to college, you can’t do this.” So be it. My GED is the Grace of God, Enthusiasm and Divine Direction.
My GED has taken me to this day working in race relations all over this country. I felt I had an inferiority complex until I realized that the highest ranking white male in this country cannot get the education I got. As a black female born up in a racist, sexist society, I have an education that they can’t even touch. They can’t touch it. And they are most inadequate in a multi-cultural society in dealing with the problems that we face every day. They don’t know where we came from and they cannot relate to it. But when we cross fertilize and we give them the information which brought us over.
And another thing we’ve done, we’ve departed from our first love. We know it was only by faith that we’ve come this far, but so many of us will not even put our feet inside a church. And that is where much of our strength came from. As black people our leadership was our pastors in our churches. Dr. Martin Luther King was a pastor. They had our interests at heart. I don’t think it is too much different today except they’ve become somewhat parochial. “If you don’t belong to my church …”
We are notorious for building barriers. We got to start building bridges, folks. We’ve got to bring somebody along with us. You know it is lonesome at the top … Bang!
I’ve been asked what this label under my name tag means: “From the Mop to the Top”. That means I started as a janitor, I ended up being the Equal Opportunity Officer with my GED. That is what that means. I’ll quit by saying this. It’s a parable, it’s a story and I’m going to leave it for you to ponder. “There was a migratory bird that stayed in the Midwest too long. The snow and the sleet and the rain had burdened him down with ice. He fell into a pasture and when he fell, he was sitting there almost at the point of death. A horse came by and dumped on the bird. He began to ruffle his feathers, you know, he got warm. And it felt so good he began to sing. Along came the barn yard cat and ate the bird. Now the moral of the story is … the one that put you in the mess may not be your enemy and the one that takes you out may not be your friend.”
Bernice claims to have graduated from Knocks College – meaning the school of hard knocks. She knows the only thing that kept her out of college was she quit school. But she was determined not to stop at that point and succeeded with her GED. Today she admonishes all young people to stay in school. It’s not the total answer but it’s the key that opens the door to the future.

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.