I still remember the day Dr. Martin Luther King was killed.
I was a 12-year-old boy growing up in Jackson, Mich., and I remember it was a rainy day. I heard the news, and all I could do was leave the house and walk outside. I just walked around—very angry, and very frustrated at 12 years old, not understanding why people get killed.
I didn't know why some people took the lives of other people, especially someone like Dr. King, who just wanted to help people, and as I was frustrated, it had an impact on me.
Fortunately, I had some good people around me, my parents especially, who were there to help me sort things out.
I would often talk to my dad about things in life—things like Dr. King being killed—things that just didn't seem right. My dad had a great perspective on things. He would always think about what happened, but more than that he would ask me to think about what I could do to make things better.
I remember I used to talk to him a lot about things not being fair in the '60s and '70s when I was growing up. But my dad grew up in the '40s and '50s, and his first job was teaching school in segregated Alexandria, Va., in 1951. At that time the law was "separate but equal," and my dad wasn't allowed to teach in white schools.
When he told me that story, I thought about how bitter I would be. But my dad said that it wasn't time to be bitter. It wasn't his place to really make changes. He couldn't affect the law. He told me that all he could do to make things better was to make sure his students in his school knew as much as they could—that they knew as much about science as the other students. I began to take that approach from my dad.
Years later, after we won the Super Bowl, President Bush invited the Indianapolis Colts to come to the White House. We landed at the Reagan Airport and drove through Alexandria, Va., on our way there. It was a moment I'll never forget, driving through that city and thinking how a generation ago my dad couldn't teach at the white schools there. Now, because of him and so many people like him, his son was going to the White House.
It brought tears to my eyes. It made me think of the big sacrifices of people like Dr. King. But it also made me think of people like my dad, and what he did—and what you can do.
Article courtesy of Parenting Teens magazine.