On Saturday, June 11, 2011, Greg Jr. and I began our 2500-mile round trip journey to Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We spent a week traveling together and bonding. The last time the two of us took a similar trip Greg Jr. was seven years old in 1998. We went to New York to visit the World Trade Center. We all know what happened to the World Trade Center three years later. My 16-year-old son Christopher would have joined us on this trip but he was participating in an academic bowl in San Francisco, California sponsored by One hundred Black Men of Montgomery. 

We had a special mission. We were headed to attend my best college friend, Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Charles Johnson’s Sunset Parade. We stopped in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on the way and we checked on some of our rental property, went to my old childhood church with my oldest brother, Napoleon, and visited my third grade teacher 92 year old, Mrs. Jesse Pash and met new friends the Wilsons. At my childhood church, there were only two people still alive that attended when I was a little boy.  He and his wife were sitting in the same seats that they sat in when I was a little boy. She is 95 years old and he is 96 years old and still driving anywhere he chooses to drive. When I asked him, his secret for longevity his response was “God promoted me to become a perfect man, “NO DRINKING, NO SMOKING AND NO SEX!” My childhood friend, our escort for the day, Helen Bowens-Valdez hit the floor laughing. She wanted to know when the sex stopped.  We left Mrs. Pash’s beautiful home and joined the Wilson’s for a wonderful dinner at their sprawling estate prepared by their drop-dead gorgeous daughter, Janae who happens to be single and a rising senior architecture major at Hampton University. Dr.  Moses Wilson a local OB-Gyn and his wife Mrs. Amy Wilson have a son, Moses Wilson III at Harvard University in the Post Baccalaureate Program. He plans to enter Medical School once he completes that program. Moses III was student body President at Hampton University for three years. He also personally knows President Obama. Alexis will have many people to meet in August when she starts school at Wellesley College. 

At Jeh Johnson’s parade, Greg Jr. and I both wearing matching light blue and white seersucker suits was able to take pictures with top military officers. I had never seen so many four star generals and other top military personnel. Jeh took it all in and remained humble. The reception at the Women’s Memorial was off the chain. Greg Jr. made me stop telling the officers how much I liked their medals. The reception at Jeh’s home was even more impressive. We left Jeh’s reception around midnight and drove to Pittsburgh where my old law school friend David Rand Silverman later met us. David Silverman is President and owner of Klafters Inc. We spent a portion of the day with David and then headed to Charlotte, North Carolina where we took my old Morehouse friend, 89-year-old Leon Martin, class of 1946 to lunch. After our visit with Mr. Martin, we left for Atlanta where we had dinner at Taco Mac. We then headed back to Montgomery and literally fell into our beds exhausted.

 In the words of my dad, “You must honor the chair whether it is sitting, walking or lying down.”