I recall several people approaching me as a child, asking,
“Boy, can you sang like your daddy? Man, his daddy sure could sang!”
I slowly and reluctantly made my way to the bed in the small, damp, dark room shared with my younger siblings. I was four and a half, and my father, the breadwinner of the family, had died at the hands of a hit and run driver a year earlier. Despite my mother’s efforts and help from relatives, we were still poor, and everything was uncertain and confusing. We were hanging by the balance in every way imaginable. For these and other reasons, I was perpetually scared and came to dread bedtime. It was during these quiet hours in my maternal grandparents’ worn and overcrowded house in rural Doby, Mississippi, that the recurring nightmare that would stay with me for years began.
I recall several people approaching me as a child, asking,
“Boy, can you sang like your daddy? Man, his daddy sure could sang!”
BOOK SYNOPSIS:
Through this riveting memoir, the reader is invited to co-pilot the author’s rocky journey of failures, triumphs and hard-fought lessons that span from childhood, decades of military service during the tumultuous era of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, all the way to retirement as an honorable airman from the U.S. Air Force. In A Triumphant Life, the author details his experience returning from deployment to the United States during a time in history when Jim Crow Laws were being enforced. He recants in detail the humiliation of suffering through emasculating and dehumanizing racial injustices and mistreatment stateside, while wearing his official, government-issued military uniform. The main character and narrative voice, E.J. Rekcutt, uses these accounts to convey the lesson that a triumphant life can be defined a number of different ways, which he concludes for his own life is less about a measurement of success against the world’s standard, but more about a person’s ability to rise from a deficit to overcome insecurities, fears and obstacles to experience loving and healthy relationships and some victories along the way. Starting with a shaky foundation of poverty and the absence of a father figure, among other challenges, in the book, the author emphasizes unity through greater empathy and seeking to understand and embrace our difference, even celebrate them. The memoir serves as a beneficial tool to help the reader navigate through their own difficult and uncertain seasons of life and serves as a guide on how to map out a course of action to change your trajectory, no matter how challenging it may get.
Now fully retired, the author spends much of his time reading and researching various media forms for materials to support his own writing projects. He is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D. C. and earned a Masters degree in Social Work from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.. He retired from the U. S. Air Force after 23 years of honorable service and ten years as a Civil Servant (OPM) with the U. S. Army. Additionally, he has worked as a School Social Worker for the Detroit Public Schools, other agencies in the Greater Detroit Area, and the State of New Mexico. He is active in civic and religious organizations, including his church, where he participates in the choir and as a soloist. He still enjoyed the game of golf. He now resides in the Florida panhandle with his spouse of 31 years.