Fulfilling My Destiny, Step by Step: - An Autobiography -

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Fulfilling My Destiny, Step by Step

An Autobiography

AuthorHouse

The Beginning

I was born a dreamer. Dreaming often got me in trouble in my early years. When I was supposed to be working, I was somewhere dreaming. My grandmother Sally said I did more daydreaming than completing my chores. I once asked her what daydreaming was. She said it was sleeping when you are lazy and do not want to do something and that I was a professional at it. One day I looked up the word and found that it had a different meaning than the one my grandmother had given me—a pleasant visionary, usually a wishful creation of the imagination. I liked this definition better than my grandmother's because my mind sometimes captured visions of a different place in a different time that led me to think it was all my imagination. But what was I really dreaming, or daydreaming, about? Who knows? My grandmother said it was just my way of avoiding work. I hung around her a lot, so she may have had it right.

For example, one hot summer day my grandmother called for me to meet her on her front porch. We had a telephone but lived so close to her house that calling me in a loud voice from her back porch was the easiest way for her to summon me. So she let out a loud call: "Come up here, Robert Louis." I never liked being called by both my first and middle names, but that was the way adults and some others summoned me without fail. So I got use to it.

We lived in a neighborhood in the house built by my father on land my grandmother had divided between each of her seven children. The neighborhood was so close together that my grandmother had to specify to whom she was calling because if she didn't, anybody could come from at least six different houses, which were all within a short walk to her front porch.

"Why?" I shouted back. As the word left my mouth, I realized it did not sound good at all.

"Do not ask me any questions. Just get up here and bring with you that BB gun you got."

Realizing the error of questioning an adult, and my grandmother at that, I now had a good reason to be concerned. Having heard of her legendary skills with a shotgun, not only was I worried of her reaction to me questioning her, but I also immediately wondered why my grandmother wanted me to bring my BB rifle.

With rifle in hand, I slowly walked the twenty-five or so yards from where we lived to my grandmother's front porch. Knowing I was a good shot with my BB rifle, my grandmother pointed out the spot in the top left corner of the roof of her house, where a blackbird was about to build its nest. She told me to sit in the brown chair on the left side of her front porch and when the blackbird returned, to shoot him.

I sat down in the brown chair. My grandmother told me I needed to sit still and concentrate to see the blackbird when it returned to the corner of the roof. With my rifle in hand, I sat in the soft brown chair on the left side of the front porch as instructed and waited for the blackbird to come. I waited and waited, but no blackbird came anywhere in sight. I sat so long with my eyes fixed on the left top corner of the roof that I grew tired and restless. To not lose my focus, I stood up and walked from the left side of the front porch where I was sitting to the right side, careful to keep my gaze in the flight path the blackbird would have to take to land at the top left corner of the roof.

After walking from the left side of the front porch to the right side for about ten minutes, I finally sat back down in the brown chair and continued to look for the blackbird. With no bird after nearly thirty-two minutes of waiting and watching, I could no longer keep my eyes gazing up at the corner of the roof, so I drifted off into a trance, looking straight ahead. I had not been in this state a full minute before my grandmother came out the front door. She just stood and looked at me; I was now in such a deep trance that I was not even aware of her presence.

While standing there staring at me as I stared straight ahead, motionless, my grandmother looked up and saw the blackbird with twigs in its beak land in a tall oak tree some ten yards to the left of the rooftop of her house. After staying perched on a limb high in the oak tree for about a minute and a half, the blackbird swooped down and went into the left corner of her roof. Without saying one word to me, who was in one of my famous trances (daydreaming, my grandmother called it) and was oblivious to what was going on around me, my grandmother turned and walked back into the house, mumbling, "He is just like I said—lazy."

I grew up in a small town named Garner, North Carolina. The town is some three miles southeast of the state capital of Raleigh. The town has a rich history. Established in 1847, it was said that Garner—like most towns that had settlers before the Revolutionary War and before the Civil War—got its start with the coming of the railroad. Despite my scant knowledge of how Garner was established, even as a youngster, to me Garner possessed all of the ingredients and elements suited for dreaming. The town was small. Some people sat on their front porches and chatted among family and friends. Others walking along the unpaved roads would come up and join in the conversations. This was especially true on Sunday afternoon following church service and Sunday dinner. And for me, this routine lent itself to wondering and having visions about distant places and imagining what it would be like somewhere other than Garner.

I grew up in a close-knit community. The community was named after my grandmother—the Sally Whitaker Subdivision. My grandmother was born in Garner in 1899. She was an amazing lady who lived to be one month short of ninety-three years old and passed away in November 1992. Her husband—my grandfather Willie, who she married in 1924—passed away in 1941 after a lengthy illness, but not before making sure family land matters were in order.

My grandmother was left a forty-two-year-old widow with seven small children to raise—including Verna, my mother— ranging in age from seventeen years old to four years old. Back then the neighborhood came to the aid of a widow with that many small children. My grandmother appreciated the support from the community, church family, and others, but as a person with a year of college training, she set out to develop a strategy for how the family would survive and even thrive following the death of her husband. Her success in moving the family forward originated from land ownership matters that had been taken care of prior to the death of her husband. As I grew into adulthood, I came to understand the tremendous importance of the planning my grandparents must have done early in their marriage.

Her Christian faith was exceptionally strong and served as the taproot in her life and also in the lives of her seven children. She understood the connection between secular education and the strong Christian training she had received from her own parents and grandparents. A good example of her strategy was the process she used in the education of her seven children. My grandmother believed men were ordained by God to be leaders in every aspect of their lives, especially leading their households, which would result in the total family being anchored by a solid spiritual foundation.

This philosophy resulted in three of her four sons being college educated, while education for her three girls ended with a high school diploma. Her oldest son was not able to go to college because he was needed to help work the fields after the death of his father and was soon after called off to the war. Like his three sisters, his education ended when he graduated from high school. Christian development linked to a formal education was the bedrock of the Whitaker family, and I was keenly aware of the importance of this two-way connection.

My great-grandfather William was a land baron. His land was situated in St. Mary's Township. It is reported that he once owned nearly half of Garner. The origin of his land is not known for sure, but some family members said that land ownership by Blacks was passed down from their slave ancestors and it was possible his land was acquired this way. This landownership and transfer process helped his family maintain a high degree of stability, and the land transfer continues today to the current generations.

With education as the second tenet of the family legacy and segregation being so entrenched at the time, my great-grandfather donated some of his land to start the first school for Blacks in the town of Garner. The school was located on the current site of the Rand Street Christian Church. Great-Grandpa William was one of the first Black persons on Garner's original board of education, which oversaw the administration of the town's first Black school. In 1917, the school moved from the Rand Street United Church of Christ (new name today) to a larger building on Old Garner Road. The school was renamed the Garner Colored School in the 1940s.

Not having known my great-grandfather, I always imagined that his land ownership probably produced a measure of respect between him and white citizens. Although there was separation among the races in every way imaginable—from housing to eating facilities, schools and churches, drinking fountains, and more—there appeared to be a type of unique relationship among the Blacks and whites of Garner, and I was proud of the role my great-grandfather played in bringing about some measure of respect for him and others in the community who followed him.

As I pondered the relationship between my great-grandfather and the town elders and the subsequent seemingly benign relationship among the whites and Blacks of Garner, I wondered if my sense of well-being was because of my ignorance of the real state of affairs that simmered just beneath the surface in the town during the period I came along. After all, Blacks made only a fraction of what whites earned for the same jobs or because they could not or did not aspire to work beyond these jobs because of race and class. My sense of well-being also may have resulted from the fact that Blacks "stayed in their place," which seemed permanently fixed upon the landscape of my life. Still further, it could be associated with the proximity of Garner to the capital city of Raleigh, which provided a fair amount of comingling and respect, at least in the service workplace, so I became increasingly aware as I matured into young adulthood and continued to process what was going on around me.

I had a sense of fairly peaceful race relations in Garner during my youth. I remember that although life was hard at times, its simplicity brought with it a kind of peace, a sense that life for me would be filled with great possibilities. This peace manifested itself in a sweet pleasantness that came from the routines of my life that were as constant as the seasons that came and went and the stars that shined brilliantly in the expansive night sky.

And as a testament to how a town and its surrounding areas can expand their horizons to improve the lives of all residents, the tobacco fields where I worked as a young boy now hold upscale high-end housing developments. Blacks who were once subject to discriminatory housing practices now live harmoniously—it appears—with whites and many other races and cultures on the same land once owned and farmed by their white ancestors. Also, today, at the entrance to Garner, small shopping malls and business centers line the highways where cotton gins and farming trade stations once stood. Unless you miss the "Welcome to Garner" sign, one cannot tell where Garner ends and the capital city of Raleigh begins.

As the years progressed, my grandmother passed her land down to her children. Today, some family members live on the same plot of land. Family members who established their lives in other parts of the country have sold their land to other members of the family. My uncle Thurman sold his land to me, and I have now transferred it to my son. This landownership and transfer process has helped my family maintain the land of their ancestors down through the years. Growing up in this kind of environment—on the land that bears my grandmother's name—provided a high degree of constancy in my life and suggested to me that things were good. So to me, Garner possessed all the ingredients and elements suited for dreaming—or daydreaming, as my grandmother would say—about future possibilities.

As I grew older, I continued to dream. My dreams became one with my soul, embedded deeply into my being. They matured as I matured and somehow seemed to be symbolic of the changes that so completely enveloped my community in the 1950s and early '60s. This maturity allowed me to notice what seemed to be the limitless commitment of Garner's Black educators, ministers, civic leaders, and families to make a better life for the Black community despite what seemed to be insurmountable challenges at the time. I came to understand that through all these challenges, my community somehow managed to survive and even thrive, at least from my vantage point.

In examining how the community met these challenges, I found a common thread of strong faith and hard work that wove itself relentlessly throughout the lives of those in the community, which became a tightly woven quilt of love for and pride in family and community that made Garner such a special place, a place that continues to bring great joy to me even now, more than sixty years later. I would later learn that this beginning help set the foundation for me.

By the way, I did not kill the blackbird that day but did shoot and kill it days later before nesting season started.

My Mother and Father

In 1927, my grandmother bore her third child and named her Verna Mae; she in time would become my mother. The name Verna is of Latin origin, but the actual genesis of my mother's name among her family ancestry is unknown. The meaning of Verna is "spring green." In the mid-1800s, Verna and its different forms were very popular first names for girls. The popularity of Verna as a first name for baby girls declined in the 1960s. Looking back at the ancestral line, with no other known family member named Verna, it is probably accurate that the name was given because of its popularity at the time and her personality.

Verna Mae, as she was called, was a brilliant child, and she lived her entire life in Garner. Early in life, Verna Mae demonstrated a love for life. Well into her adult years, she often revisited her childhood days affectionately, speaking of her love of reading, singing, and dreaming. I was keenly aware of my mother's desire for something greater out of life. Her love of reading and singing was balanced with a passion for education. My mother was a star student throughout her twelve-year high school education. She often said to me and my six siblings that if she had come along in more modern times, her education definitely would not have stopped with a high school diploma but would have ended with a college degree and possibly even more advanced training.

An avid reader from her youth, my mother extended her training and enlarged her world through books. As a child, she traveled to distant lands by dreaming of the many places she discovered through the various books she read. Her love of reading continued into her adult life. Her favorite reading material was the hardbound version of Reader's Digest, which became required reading for me and my siblings. It was in Reader's Digest where my mother found what would become her favorite poem, "The House by the Side of the Road" by Sam Walter Foss.

Because of the time in which she lived and the family's condition (her father passing away when she was fourteen years of age, leaving her mother to raise seven children by herself), my mother was never afforded the opportunity to soar as her spirit often yearned. As a result, her real world was often lived through books as she dreamed and imagined how things could be for her if the situation and circumstances had been different. After being baptized at the age of twelve and becoming a member of Wake Baptist Grove Church, my mother turned to the Bible to find answers to the many questions she had about her circumstances and station in life.

From reading the Bible, my mother found that God honors faithfulness and that one should trust in Him completely. She also discovered that with God, nothing was impossible, but without Him, nothing was possible. One biblical message she believed with all her heart was that for a person to become all that God had destined for him or her, that person has to leave the place of his or her birth and establish him- or herself elsewhere. One of her favorite sayings to her children was, "If Jesus was not accepted in Nazareth, the place of His birth, followers of Jesus will not be fully accepted in their hometowns, and that includes you if you are a follower of Him." I heard this saying often and really took it to heart as I examined and processed the lives of others who had been fixed in Garner since birth.

My mother truly believed that individuals could make greater contributions in an environment different from their birthplace. She often said that in a person's birthplace, he or she never overcomes being seen as "the carpenter's son." She would say to me that here in Garner, people would always see me as Louis Shepard's boy, and that designation would carry with it many things that had nothing to do with me and never take into consideration my own personhood of who God made me to be and the steps I was taking to get to what He had already destined me to become. She would say the distance from one's birthplace could be as simple as changing church locations and relocating to a new neighborhood across town.

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Excerpted from Fulfilling My Destiny, Step by Step by Robert Louis Shepard. Copyright © 2013 Robert Louis Shepard, PhD. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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