Knowing Your Community…The Rewards are Immense

It is amazing how little many of us know about our own communities and the people in them, myself included. I will not pretend to be all knowing and Mrs. High and Mighty. I will be the first to admit that I ignorant when it comes to my community. However, I know exactly who to go to to find things out. My family is a great source of information in respects to my community because they have strong ties in my county and state. So many people know my family that it is shameful when I have no idea who someone is. SERIOUSLY.

My great-grandfather is one of the pillars of the community. I have friends who have known him almost as long as I have because of the many properties he owns. They may live in one of them or in his neighborhood and say say yeah I know Mr. B. I’m like he goes by Mr. B.? And my family is like you didn’t know that? I’m like no…

Then the great things he has done in both the community and church over the years, I am telling you I can listen to his stories for hours and have. I love listening to him telling me how he grew up and the people he met over the years running his many shops, restaurants, and businesses. He is a legend in this area. He had famous people come through this area through the ‘chittlin circuit’ (the south, east, and mid-west establishments where blacks could safely play during racial segregation) knew they could go to play their music to sing and play in his establishments back in the day. With him, my great grandmother, my mom and her siblings working in these establishments too these stories are endless. The antics are pretty funny too. When they ask me where I get some of my behaviors I just turn some of their stories right back around on them.

My parents continued in such a legacy. They keep ties in this community. My dad worked at a local news company with national syndication and afforded him opportunities to meet and interview community leaders as well as work with charities in the community.

My mother working with the schools worked with children and helped with many school led organizations that helped with literacy, child development, and advocacy. I still believe that if my mom never went on into administrative work, she would have been an amazing social worker or child advocate! She is passionate about children and their rights.

Though I had no idea about all the people that I had come into contact with over the years in my jobs…they have come full circle as I have grown older. I worked at an establishment when I was younger that was full of community figureheads and I had no idea that those faces I saw held so many positions. I have to remind them that I used to work there and they were like oh yeah. And now because my dad got an award alongside some of them I need to stay in contact so I can hob knob, LOL.

Moreover, I have been afforded some amazing opportunities with my parents that I did not fully appreciate or comprehend when I was younger and I thank God for their patience, pictures, and the memories to commemorate/ immortalize the moments as some things can never happen again. I have pictures with senators, congresswomen, pictures in at at the White House (apparently you cannot get those as a regular person) thankful that dad was with the media, lol. Then my mom getting me my first job. I will be forever grateful. She made sure I got all my certifications, got me to all my required meetings to be a lifeguard, and talked to her friends and my after school directors and her mom who who signed my worker’s permit with my mom.

My mom also made me go to special events in the community that I never would have known about if not for her that were downtown for Raleigh. I would meet people I had no idea about but she would say take a picture, it will mean something someday. She would ask me if I wanted to volunteer in modeling things and such and I did it not sure WHAT I was doing. She was right, I look back on it now and between her and my dad I have had a very eventful life and I’m not even 1/2 through this journey. I look back on pictures and my friends are like where is that from? How did you know that person? How did you meet them? I non-chalantly tell them a story, not because it’s not interesting, but because I had no idea at the time who the person was or what was going on, as my friends are seriously freaking out like, I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!

I guess at some point I may post some of these pictures on here and on my facebook as a throwback moment. I may even tag some of the people if they are still in these political seats (though I am not really the political type) just so they can have a little laugh at what they use to look like. Some of my pictures go back as far as 1994. So yeah anytime you can go back 2 decades, there are bound to be laughs about something in a picture, hair, clothes, furniture, something!