From Ebonics To Author - Robert M Wade - Bog

This memoir follows my life on farms in Arkansas in the 1950s and 1960s, tojoining the Gary Job Corps Center, in San Marcos, Texas, to a career in the military, tobeing a small business owner with the Army & Air Force Exchange Service on Fort SamHouston, Texas after retirement, to a second career with the Texas Child ProtectiveServices. Having dropped out of high school at the end of my 10th-grade year, learningto speak English properly was never a priority. I associated with the people who sharedmy lot in life, the poorly educated. It was while stationed in Korea in 1971, I learned thebrutal, truth that those of us who spoke Ebonics were deemed unintelligent. I was amember of the Company C, 728th MP Battalion basketball team playing in the Postchampionship game. It was the first game the Armed Forces Radio Network had everbroadcast live in the command. I was the best player on the team, so I was the one the8th U.S. Army post newspaper reporter/radio announcer interviewed live pregame. I wasso naïve I thought the interview went well. A member of my unit recorded the interviewand ask if I wanted to listen to it upon my return to the unit. I had never been soembarrassed in my life. The interview by members of my basketball team, who listenedto it, dubbed it the Ebonics (Hillbilly) interview of the century. After this interview, I madea pledge that even if I never learned to speak English properly, I would never embarrassmyself like that again. Dedication and leadership assignments throughout mymilitary career enabled me to keep that promise I made to myself all those years ago.Although I have published several books since my children still say I soundcountry sometimes. They ask me why I have never written my memoir so thegrandchildren can read for themselves what grandpa's life was like growing up in thesouth, and about the trials and tribulations I faced while in the Army and since myretirement. This appealed to me because who can tell my story better than I can, and atthe same time preserve the history of my experiences to pass along to my family andfuture generations? This is my legacy, enjoy the read.