where white families were usually depicted as living middle, or upper class lives. It was sometimes a subtle distinction, but even at that young age, I noticed that overall, movies and shows with majority white casts were not about the fact that they were white. Instead, they were about people living life and dealing with whatever dramas came up. This was in contrast to the shows and movies with majority black or Latino casts, where it seemed that their color or ethnic background was usually the primary issue. I wondered, even at that young age, why the black families couldn’t just be shown as living middle-class lives in the suburbs, without the fact that they were black being front and center.
In the years that followed, when The Cosby Show came out, I finally got my wish. I finally saw a happy, functional, successful, educated black family depicted as living life and dealing with family issues, without their skin color being the star of the show. As I grew older and learned more about American history with slavery, Jim Crowe laws, segregation, Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights era, I was sometimes saddened by how unfair it all seemed. I often wondered why people couldn’t just treat one another equally. All these things: the media depictions of blacks and minorities, the racial history of the US, as well as personal experiences I would have growing up, served as further motivation for me to become a pilot one day. Even at the tender age of seven, I realized that my captain’s uniform would in some ways, be able to speak louder than I ever could, to say that we are ALL equal in the eyes of God.
In Harlem where we lived, I noticed that most people in my neighborhood were indeed black and while our neighborhood was just fine, it was nothing compared to the elegant, immaculate neighborhoods around Central Park, which invariably seemed to have mainly white people living in them. Thus, the disparities I saw on television seemed to echo what was going on in real life. I also noticed that as my mom, sister, and I were exploring the city, that depending on where we went, there were concentrations of people from similar backgrounds all living near each other. There were ethnic neighborhoods, such as Little Italy and Chinatown, whose names were self-explanatory, along with Spanish Harlem with a majority Latino population and many others. In our travels around the city, I heard many different languages being spoken and saw many different kinds of clothing from different nations being worn. This fascinated me because I realized that all these different kinds of people had to have originally come from other countries, which stoked my curiosity about the world and increased my desire to travel to those other countries one day to see how life was.
I was naturally very curious about other cultures, languages, customs, religions, and food, and I wanted to know all I could about all these different kinds of people, so it struck me as a bit odd that most people I saw seemed to socialize pretty much exclusively with people from their own background. It seemed that with such a huge variety of people from virtually every country on the planet living in the city, that people would’ve interacted with each other more, but with a few exceptions, that was not the case. It was plain to me that people were missing an amazing opportunity to spend time with, and to learn from those different from themselves. I felt that while it was important to be proud of whatever country or background one was from, it was equally important to try to find common ground with people from different backgrounds. That outlook would serve me well in my future flying career and world travels. I also realized that ultimately, even all these so-called “different” kinds of people were actually not so different after all. We all had two eyes, (although of varying colors) we all had hair, (although of differing textures) we all had skin, (although of differing shades) etc, but MOST importantly we ALL had dreams. It was clear to me then, as now, that in the end, there is only ONE race that truly matters, the one to which we ALL belong: The Human Race.
Moving to Staten Island
As the summer of 1981 approached, I had been in the States for a little over a year, and my parents moved our little family to the Borough of Staten Island on the other side of New York harbor. Soon afterwards my little sister Lisa was born. We lived in a building in the West Brighton housing projects, on the sixth floor. It was a two-bedroom apartment, and Betty, Lisa, and I shared a room, with Mom and Dad in the other bedroom just down the short hallway. In what turned out to be a stroke of luck for me, our apartment, which was high up, had a view facing the Goethals Bridge and Newark New Jersey, home of Newark International Airport. To my delight, I soon realized that on a clear day, I could see all the airplanes taking off and landing in the distance, and often parked myself in front of the window, stared at the airplanes, and dreamt.
The school that Betty and I attended, Public School 18 (P.S. 18) was luckily just a couple of blocks from our building, so we could walk there and back together every day. The West Brighton housing projects, or just “the projects” as Betty and I called it, was a group of eight buildings, each eight stories tall, with a mixture of two to four bedroom apartments. The New York City Housing Authority ran it, which meant the rents were much lower than in comparably sized, privately owned apartment complexes in the city. The low rents were the main reason my parents had moved us there, as it would allow them to start saving money to buy their own house. This was one of their dreams so that Betty, Lisa, and I could have a better life. In the meantime, we had to put up with all the issues that went along with living in the projects.
Betty and I soon discovered that we were being raised quite a bit differently from many of the neighborhood kids. Although they allowed us a bit of freedom, Mom and Dad always tried to foster the same ideals of discipline – respect for elders and manners – in their kids with which they had been raised with in Haiti. With Dad still driving a taxi and being gone most of the day, the task of keeping us in line fell mostly on Mom.
My parents stressed the importance of education and did not tolerate any negative reports from our teachers about our behavior in class, so we made sure to stay in line. I was an average student who brought home average report cards, and my parents often reminded me that doing well in school held the key to me realizing my dream of flying. I soon learned that Betty and I were among the few students with both of our parents at home raising us together. As I grew older, I realized just how fortunate we were.
Superman, Toy Planes, and Libraries
I still remember the first time I saw the movie Superman in early 1982. It was on ABC network’s Sunday Night Movie, long before cable television movie channels, the internet, and video stores made such “event” movies passé. When the night of the movie finally came, Mom let Betty and I stay up late to watch it. Superman, who had only his red cape to keep him airborne, was fanning the flames of my dream of flying. Of course, I knew it was only a movie and that I would need an airplane if I ever hoped to emulate my new favorite hero. The first night of the movie ended on a cliffhanger scene with Lois Lane plunging from the roof of a high-rise office building in Metropolis (aka 1978 New York City). I couldn’t wait for the next night. When it finally came, (the longest twenty-one hours of my life) I watched in awe as Superman flew around, performing feat after incredible feat. It was pure magic. As the final credits rolled, I sat in front of that television reading the names of the people who had made this wonder of a movie and listened to John Williams’ beautiful orchestral score, perhaps my love of classical music began at this time.
On previous trips to the library, I had seen albums available to checkout, and I resolved to go the library, which was near my house, after school the next day, to see if they had the Superman soundtrack. As I went to bed that night, I sat awake replaying all the flying scenes in my head. Thanks to Superman, I wanted to fly now more than ever!
As luck would have it, when I went to the library the next day, the Superman soundtrack album was surprisingly still available. Didn’t everyone want to run out and borrow this album? I wondered. There was a Hobby Shop near the library, that sold model boats, airplanes, and remote-control cars. With Superman having reignited my passion for all things flying, I went to the store in hopes of finding a model airplane that fit into my meager budget. I didn’t have much money, being an eight year-old, but I did have the twenty-five cents that it cost to buy a balsa-wood toy plane that the
