My Integrated Life III
Clouds on the Horizon
The Wobble Begins
There was no doubt that my balancing act was getting to be a serious handful. Music, academics, a budding journalism career, the ever-present civil rights struggle and war worries were weighing on my mind.
It was also getting increasingly difficult for me to ignore internal questions about my absent father. Like that annoying small stone in your shoe, it wasn’t long before—one way or another—I was going to have to stop along the path to deal with it.
The tragedy of the Kent State Massacre in May of 1970 triggered deep evaluation for me: Who was I, really? What was I doing here? Where else should I be? Why couldn’t I ever relax, and how could I regain equilibrium?
Like reviewing old movie footage, I began to replay my life looking for something to help me deal with something deep that I hadn’t dealt with previously. The more I concentrated, the more I began to remember events surrounding my parents’ breakup that I hadn’t allowed myself to revisit ever before.
At the time when a young man most needs the closest guidance to navigate the path into manhood, I was without my captain. Adding to the chaos, we were forced to move out of our house in 1964 because of something called Urban Renewal. I learned that urban renewal was actually short hand for “build a big new freeway—over land formerly known as the Black neighborhood.”
Our little home, located at 1434 Walker St., was to be leveled to make way for the new freeway.
So: wow, first Dad is gone and now the city is telling us they can just take our house and offer compensation based on their assessment, not our asking price. Mom was able eventually to find us a new home in the Union Park neighborhood.
Surprisingly, the move turned out to be a very cool thing, because instead of being held at a middle school, my new 9th grade classes convened at North High School, so I got to attend high school a year early. This wouldn’t be the last time a perceived negative would transform itself to my advantage. Flashing back to the present, I realize that attending classes at Drake was becoming burdensome because I simply had too many commitments and no time for rest or reflection.
As for Viet Nam—another stressor at the time— Mom hadn’t even wanted me to join the Cub Scouts so, the military was completely out of the question. As she told me with fire in her eye: “I’ll send you to Canada myself before I’d let them have you for that war!”
In an atmosphere of so much turmoil, I was really missing my father’s influence in my life. Telling myself that I didn’t care, or that it didn’t matter wasn’t working for me anymore. In the spring of 1969, I was sitting in my office at Drake when I had a revelation-like flash: I’m a reporter. I can find out everything else; why don’t I find my father? Wow! good question Dartanyan. What would a good reporter do?
I decided a good reporter would try the musicians’ union. I got the number for the New York Musicians Union Local 212, placed the call and asked:
“Hello? Can you give me contact information for Ellsworth Brown please?”
“Just a minute…yeah we’ve got a number right here for you.”
Holy crap. I had my Dad’s phone number. Now the question was: “Do I reeeallly want to make the call?”
No longer able to quell the inner chaos that draped over me like a heavy overcoat, I dialed the number in hopes that some resolution might be gained from closing this long unresolved circle. Hearing his “hello” on the other end of the line, I felt like a salmon arriving back upstream to its spawning grounds. My father’s voice resolved the suspended chords of my life. I think we were both relieved that we were still alive and that positive energy seemed to attend our reunion. We filled each other in on some key points. Yes, Ellsworth was still a working musician, living on Staten Island. No, Dartanyan didn’t play a lot because he was in college, and working as a journalist.
That call was the coolest thing ever, and after it I updated my brothers Don and Kevan on the news. Reconnecting with dad was literally life changing, as all three of us would try, with varying degrees of success, to rebuild a relationship with Ellsworth and to make up for the time lost.