Harrison Not Ford
“When people ask how are you, I say, ‘If I was any better, I’d be twins.’
I was going to join the circus but didn't have enough talent. The next thing down was becoming a park ranger. I worked with the Park Service and Bureau of Land Management for 25 years–from California to Boston and the Cape Cod National Seashore. I lived in a small beach cottage on Cape Cod and completely renovated it by hand. It was a three-minute walk to Cape Cod Bay with the most incredible sunsets. I would invite local musicians to play at the beach for sunset. We created a happening out of it.
I became a musician while I was living in California. I bought a nice guitar, forcing me to play more often. I went to an open mic at a coffee shop. An older guy walked up to the microphone, holding his guitar like a security blanket. Head down. Shoulders slumped. Said he was going to play ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ by Bob Dylan. He started the song. Screwed it up completely. Things got dead quiet. He leaned to the microphone, saying, 'I'm sorry. It’s the first time I've ever done anything like this.' The audience nearly gave him a standing ovation. He regained his composure and got the song done. We waited for the second song. He leaned to the microphone again, saying, ‘I'm sorry, that's the only song I've got.’ This guy got up and played one hundred percent of the one song he knew. I thought, ‘If he can do it, I can, too.’
Two weeks later, I went to the open mic and played a song I wrote about the coffee shop. They used it as their theme song: it felt so good that I started writing more songs.
I never had kids, so I had a lot of freedom. I hitchhiked across the country several times. Learned more hitchhiking than at any other time. You have very little control when you're on the side of the road trying to get a ride. When I retired from the parks, I did four round trips across the country on my motorcycle with my guitar on my back. I hit all the lower 48 states. I started creating a log from these trips but spent more time writing than exploring, so I turned the trips into sand castles. I couldn't repeat or replace those memories.
I was going to sell my home on Cape Cod in January 2020 and travel in my van for the ‘grand tour,’ visiting friends, seeing national parks, and playing music. But as soon as I sold my house, COVID happened. I was homeless. There were no gigs, and all of the parks were closed. I lived at the mercy of friends who let me sleep in my van parked in their yard.
I grew up in Birmingham and went to college in Mobile. Never thought I would return to the South, but I got tired of the cold winters. I lived in Ft. Morgan, then moved to Fairhope. There was music and friends all around me.
I once saw Will Kimbrough play in California. He told me about playing music at the Frog Pond in Silverhill, Alabama. I had to go. The first show I could attend was sold out. I wrote the owner, Cathe Steele, a note telling her how seeing a show at the Frog Pond was one of my dreams. I would clean her windows and vacuum her floors if she let me in. I signed it ‘I go by Harrison, not Ford.’ My first name is Harrison; everyone fills in the Ford. Cathe replied, ‘Well, Mr. Not Ford, I think we can squeeze you in.’ I became the thing that came for dinner and never left. Magic is produced at the Frog Pond. What you see and hear today will not be replicated again.
The Tolstoy Hut became another one of my favorite places in Fairhope. I can play here for hours because the acoustics from the dome are so good; sometimes, I invite other musicians to join me. It would have been fun to record a music series like Tiny Desk on NPR and call it Tiny Dome.
I got a life-changing gift on October 21, 2023. I found out I have pancreatic cancer, a terminal disease. But the beauty is that I had a warning and time to wind down my life. Six of my friends died during the same time with little or no warning, including my brother.
I went through a lot of research and down many rabbit holes about treatments. Even went to Arizona for alternative treatment, with marginal results. I researched chemo and surgeries but didn't want them. I may live a little longer, but what kind of life would I have? I’m 76 years old. I've had a good run. I'm happy. Depression, sadness, or negativity never solves anything, and nobody's getting out alive.
I'm comfortable waiting for the last train. I feel it coming, but I have everything covered. I lived a great life and am spending the rest of my time with incredible friends I’ve made along the way. They are my greatest wealth.
People ask what they can do for me. I'll tell you what you can do: laugh every day and smile. Listen to great music and sing. Love as much as you can.”
Harrison Not Ford
Gene
“I started working on standing on one finger in 1947 when I saw a circus performer do it. I couldn’t come close to being the balancer that he was. I worked on it for about 15 years and could finally do it for about 10 seconds. When I did it, there were only about five people in the world who had done it. I fell many times before I finally got up there. In gymnastics, you learn to fall. I will turn 94 on February 12 and can’t stand on one finger now.
I grew up in Toulminville, outside of Mobile. I was 14 when I won the Mobile city yoyo championship in 1942. The prize was a new Schwinn bicycle, and I was going to win it. The bus fare downtown was a nickel. I used the one nickel I had to take the bus to Bienville Square. It was a six-mile walk, but I thought I was going to win the bike and ride it back. There was a kid from the other side of town who was as good as me. We faced off against each other and did all of the tricks, so the winner would be decided by who could do the most loop-de-loops. Both of us were well into the three hundreds. I beat him by five loops. I still have that yoyo.
We used to go down to Three Mile Creek and catch crawfish. We stood on a board and sank it to the bottom of the ditch. When we let the board up, it would be covered in crawfish.
I graduated from Murphy High School on Friday, the following Monday I was in boot camp. World War II ended soon after that, but I was still a veteran of World War II.
I became a world-class weight lifter. I weighed 129 pounds but lifted 302 pounds overhead. I was small for my age and wanted an equalizer. I found I could gain muscle fast by working with the weights. Coaches at that time were against athletes working out with weights because they thought it would make you muscle-bound and slow you down.
While I was serving in the Navy in China an executive officer heard about my weight-lifting accomplishments and thought I was a good candidate for the Olympics. He tried to get clearance for me to travel from China to Philadelphia to compete in the Olympic trials, but he couldn’t do it. Transportation wasn’t what it is now. I think I could have won because I had beat the person who won the gold medal in a previous competition.
I wasn’t too interested in China, but I wish I had learned more about it. I wish I had learned more about everything that I was exposed to. I didn’t learn much in high school. I graduated from Murphy High School, but if you averaged out my grades, they were probably a D minus.
When I got out of the Navy and said I was going to college, people laughed and said I would never make it. But college was easy when I finally learned to apply myself. I competed in gymnastics at Southern Miss and won the Southern AAU all-around championship.
I even got my doctorate. I taught all day at Mobile College then left at 4:00 p.m. for the two-hour drive to Southern Mississippi. I took classes for four hours a night, five nights a week. I couldn’t afford not to work, but I got my doctorate in less than two years. I was proud of that degree because once again people said I couldn’t do it.I was one of the original faculty members at Mobile College, now the University of Mobile. It started in an office in downtown Mobile. I was the last of the original faculty members when I retired in 2011. I was there for 48 years. I taught kinesiology, exercise physiology, and statistics. I wrote the textbooks on health and statistics because there weren’t any good ones available.
When I was a professor at the University of Mobile, I taught all of the athletes. Every year on my birthday, I brought in the workout wheel that I made. I told them that anyone who could do just one roll out with the wheel would get an A in the class. I showed them how to do it first. I was in my 80s and would do 30 of them. The young athletes would try and fail, fail, fail. Only one person was able to do it, and he made an A on his own. I did that every birthday until I retired.
I also wrote poetry. After I learned I could prove myself, I was always interested in doing all I could in life. I have a great family and would do it all over again.
Gene
Hilaire
“I was raised in Mobile where I was valedictorian at LeFlore High School in 2010, and now I am a social worker helping students there. I am only 30, but I have a bunch of kids who look to me for guidance and assistance. A lot of them call me mom, and this is where I am supposed to be.
My dad was a coach and taught history at LeFlore for many years. He was always loading up kids in his truck and taking them to and from practice and tutoring so that they could participate. My mom is an elementary school teacher, so helping kids is what we do.
I went to Alabama A&M University and volunteered at a local Boys and Girls Club for my sorority service hours. I was assigned a sibling set as my mentees. They were poor, and one was nicknamed “Dirt” because of how unkempt he could be. I loved those kids and was sad to lose touch with them when they abruptly stopped coming.
I graduated with a degree in political science in 2014 with law school dreams. But reality hit—who was going to pay for law school and fund my life in a new city while I pursued the degree? I went to a forum hosted by the social work department, and it interested me. I didn’t know much about social work and naively assumed everyone had a family like mine. I enrolled in the graduate social work department and hoped to make a difference.
I got a job with DHR in Huntsville as a foster care worker, and my first case was the boys who were my mentees at the Boys and Girls Club. God affirmed that this is what I was called to do.
I moved back to Mobile in 2017 and worked as a medical social worker in pediatric intensive care at Children’s and Women’s Hospital. I loved the fast pace and patients who became family, but I couldn’t handle all of the deaths of children. There were so many times I did everything I could, but I still felt like I failed them.
I became a school social worker in 2021 and joined a great team of social workers in the Mobile County Public School System. I was assigned to the schools in my old neighborhood, and I am often reminded that not all children have the same family and opportunities I had. I help them in every way I can.
Unstable families make it hard for kids to do well in school. I work with a few unaccompanied youth who have been kicked out of their homes or who are living on their own due to the incarceration or the death of a parent or guardian. We have a lot of grandparents raising kids. Some students are parents, and we help them complete their education and do their best for themselves and their children.
Some of our kids have little to eat or don’t have running water or electricity at home. Some students are unable to get the extra help and after-school tutoring they need because they don’t have a ride home. Once we are aware of their needs, we work on solutions.
One student told me she was failing the dance class that everyone loves because she was embarrassed to change clothes. Her clothes weren’t washed at home, so now we wash them at school.
When there is a problem at school, many of these kids will tell you they don’t care if you call their parents or guardians because there is no accountability at home. No one cares enough to be mad when they do something wrong. If no one else cares, why should they?
Kids crave stability, accountability, and structure, even if it is from someone outside of their family. This is where mentors come in. Pour into them, and you will be surprised by the good they do. They want to know somebody is proud of them. I am thankful for the teachers and people at LeFlore who guided me; it is my turn to give it back.
Our students need access to role models, so I started the Rattler Belles with my good friend Jyl Hughes, an English teacher at LeFlore. We focus on culture, class, and community with our group of 25 young ladies. Our goal is for them to emerge as leaders and positive influences for the other students.
My phone is always on, and my kids call me when they need help. They know Ms. Lett shows up for games and programs or even bad situations. The biggest way to let children know I care for them is to show up. My four-year-old daughter comes with me because I want her to see how we love others. When I look back on my pictures from student move-ins, programs, games, and college send-offs, my daughter is in them.
LeFlore has an awesome alumni association that raises money for our school every year. I made a post about adopting students for Christmas in the alumni group, and they are jumping in. We can always use community help providing wraparound services for some of our students.
We collect necessities for students. I have a bookshelf in my office of school supplies, school uniforms, hygiene products, sanitary napkins, deodorant, and toothbrushes. You would be surprised how many kids don’t have those readily available.
I also have a clothes closet for events where our students need to dress up, but don’t have anything to wear. I know all of the thrift stores and can dress a kid in a heartbeat for senior activities, homecoming, graduation, interviews, or prom.
I am the calm in the storm for kids, but I also know when to call my therapist and get help calming myself. Black people pretend that therapy is not a thing, but I tell my kids that although I am counseling them, I need counseling, too. I also have a great support system from my parents and boyfriend.
These kids will steal your heart. I have a ‘son’ who recently graduated high school and received a full-tuition scholarship to The University of South Alabama awarded by The Treadwell Foundation. This young man did not have family support, so I stepped in. I took him to get his first bank account and his driver’s license and was there for college move-in day. I hound him about maintaining his grades and making wise decisions as my parents did for me.
I can see myself with a big family, whether they are kids I birthed or kids I just keep my hands on through mentorship. Social work may never make me rich, but it gives me so much more. I meet people at their lowest lows, but if I do my job, I get to see them blossom. Caterpillars become butterflies.”