WS Chronicle

This past Sunday was Father’s Day, a time we celebrate fathers. In many churches across the land, preachers make the distinction between the fathers who merely gave their chromosomes to make children and the fathers who give love to young people, with or without his chromosomes being involved.

We celebrated the latter fathers this past weekend across Winston-Salem.

There was Mo Lucas, who has become a father figure to hundreds of youth just by giving part of himself in a job with the YMCA. There was My Brother’s Second Chance, which honored men who volunteer as mentors for young boys in the community. And there is Bishop Freddie B. Marshall and his family, who have started a foundation that sponsors a comprehensive eight-week mentoring program for African-American young men.

But we can’t forget the fathers who have contributed the chromosomes but must love their children from afar. They still have some influence over their children, but not to the full extent they wish they could have. They are “the baby’s daddy.”

Fathers, we need you. We needed you in Africa to lead tribes and nations to greatness. We needed you in slavery to lead families, as many as allowed, to freedom and dignity and those fathers who were free, we needed you to show us the way to a better life. We needed you during the World Wars and other wars to show that fathers can overcome obstacles and survive.

We need you now to help us through these times of heartache, uncertainty and fear. So many young people, especially boys, have gotten attention from various organizations in the Winston-Salem area. It seems as though young boys need an extra helping of courage, fortitude, wisdom and selflessness, among other attributes, that help them become leaders in these times.

So many distractions and harmful elements have arisen over the decades. It’s almost like in the movies “Transformers” or “The Terminator”: The harmful elements seem to morph into so many things, it’s hard to keep up. The gun violence and drugs seem to snatch young boys and gobble them up if they are allowed to. Without sexual restraint and responsibility, the generations birthed are growing up without the foundations they need.

We urge the good fathers to rise up. We urge the courage and tenacity of our forefathers to rise up. We urge the kindness and gentleness to rise up. We urge the knowledge and wisdom to rise up, because so much is rising against youth today.

We have heard about those fathers who merely contribute the chromosomes but seem to contribute nothing much else in their children’s lives. In these days, many of those fathers are proving dangerous.

The killer of 49 people in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, had a young son. He didn’t appear to care about him when he went about killing other people’s sons, for he must have known he would die.

The man who mowed down his fellow workers in San Bernardino, California, had a young daughter. Did he express his love for her before he conducted his dastardly deed? He must have sensed he would die, too.

What happens when a father dies? He is no longer able to contribute to the life of his child or children. What happens when a father takes away other people’s children? He leaves a legacy no one wants to live up to.