Perseverance — Page 5
Part I – Life Before Islam 5 their relationship. My mother was immensely popular and very attractive. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was sent an induction notice to enlist in the army during World War I. However, he did not receive the notice so he did not report for duty. When the authorities discovered him they labeled him a slacker or draft-dodger. As a result, he was handcuffed, taken away, and immediately dispatched to the front lines in France where he was killed shortly thereafter, being unprepared for war with no training. Upon his death, his wife, my maternal grandmother received life insurance proceedings. She died shortly later, leaving the money for my mother, Octavia. My mother’s free spiritedness and this newfound wealth was enough for her to justify leaving the chokehold of a small town and my father. She left me and my brother, Alvin Thomas (born in 1921), to the care of her aunt, my grandmother’s sister, Ivory Brown. As my mother travelled throughout the country’s biggest cities, she would send us postcards and money to her aunt for taking care of us. I recall receiving letters and gifts from her from various cities including New York City, New Orleans and Denver. My mother finally returned when she was in her late twenties or early thirties. She tried to make up for lost time and resume her responsibility to raise her two boys. Interestingly, she became very involved in a local sanctified church, named The Church of God and Christ. She regularly took Alvin and me to attend services for a few years. As I grew to learn that the church sermons could not provide me any true guidance, I became more estranged from it. The church had no teachings that could satiate my thirst for God and Truth. It simply offered fellowship along with confusion. There was nothing