I have observed so-called fathers who stay with the mother long enough to see her pregnant. They then disappear, until the child support is ordered, or when they want to spend another 5 minutes to create another child. The fact that they can’t stay with the mother doesn’t mean they can’t be a father. I believe that it’s easier for a father to teach a son how to be a father, than it is for a mother to try to teach him.

The second lesson my father taught us was that the best caretaker of the children is their mother. If you have one car that has to be shared between mother and father, the mother gets the car. If there is money for one meal, it’s for the mother and the child. The father must sacrifice and wait. I know this is a new concept for male children who are raised by a single mother who caters to their every desire to make sure they don’t do what their father did—leave. But when that child without a father becomes a man, his training is that women are to satisfy his every need, just as his mother did. So is it any wonder that he grows up selfish, believing that mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, girlfriend, the school teacher, and all other women he encounters, must all cater to his needs? He never learns that he must cater to someone else’s needs, even those of his children.

Hence, you have the so-called father with a bunch of babies all over town. And even worse, a lot of them end up on the streets, or in gangs that do what they do to fulfill their own desires, from sex to other people’s possessions, money, and even their lives. When you have a group of males, without a father, joining together like a pack of selfish wolves, compassion is not in their vocabulary.

From my father, I learned that work is the thing to do to get what I want. An old African proverb says, "He who loves money must labor." From my father, I learned that things don’t always go your way but you must always do your best to take care of your family. He taught us that we must work together to accomplish what we want or need. He used to say in a playful way, "Two heads are better than one," then he would rub us on the head and say, "even if one is a coconut."

The second part of that lesson, on family unity, was the role my father played in the family business. He would do the heavy duty lifting and deliveries after leaving his day job working for the man. We were also taught that we had to take care of each other. If you had a fight with one of the Hopkins’ kids, you had a fight with all of us. In some cases, there would be a large family who challenged one of us, one way or the other. He taught us there was never a reason to be afraid of the numbers or size. He would say, "The bigger the family the bigger the funeral." But he taught us to fight for what was right, and if he ever caught us fighting one another, he would not spare the rod.

When my father was not around we knew to respect the brothers and the elders at the church. In a sense they served as surrogate fathers when he was not around. To today’s mothers and fathers, this is a valuable lesson. Take your child to church and Sunday school. There, they learn right from wrong and about humility, love, the value of giving, patience, obedience, faith, wisdom and knowledge and the difference between the two. Yes, there are problems in the churches, but I am reminded to two messages from two local ministers.

[My former] Pastor Tyrone Cushman [taught] that even if you don’t believe all of what’s in the Bible, if you just go by what the Bible teaches, you will still be better off. Rev. William Turner tells about all of the problems Noah must have faced on the Ark: the smells of all of the animals packed together there doing their business, and the chore of feeding the animals, but he reminds us that with all of the problems it’s safe on the Ark because it’s in the safety of God’s will to be on the ark. Church is like that.

There is certainly no better place for a black male child to find father figures and role models and patterns when the father is absent from the home or the father sets a pattern of gangster life, not working, not going to school, not helping in the home, not reading in the home, not using the computer. Your child may even be blessed enough to encounter a man like my father or my sons to emulate. Surely he may even meet the Father of all of us . . . a Father who created the earth for us, his children, and when we were sinking deeper in sinful ways, he gave us his Son to provide a hands-on pattern of fatherhood.

Happy Father's Day to my three sons, Yusef, Omar and Jamal. Love, Your Dad