Harvey Lyons - Along Came the Fixer

Along Came The Fixer

Text WAKEELAH COCROFT-ALDRIDGE,
on behalf of Story Terrace

Design Grade Design, London

Copyright HARVEY LYONS

ISBN: 978-1-0983011-4-9

First print November 2019

www.StoryTerrace.com

Three in One

I begin my story with a story about my grandfather, one told to me by my father.

He told me the story of a white mans cruelty toward the family dog. My father was a little boy in Alabama. My grandfather, grandmother, cousins everybody was a sharecropper. They sharecropped with this particular white man who lived on top of the hill. Everyone would walk together to the fields and leave their lunches around a certain tree. They had this dog named Boy. They would take Boy with them, and the dog would watch their lunches. My grandfather would then walk to the railroad, where he worked.

This particular day, the white man came down to the tree, and I guess Boy barked at him. He killed Boy. So when my grandmother and all other family members who worked the field came in for lunch, they found Boy dead. They found out what happened, and they all left the field.

Later on that day, my grandfather walked back to the field from the railroad. He usually picked everybody up from the field, and then they would all go home together. But no one was there. So he came on home. When he got home, my grandmother told him, Mr. So-and-So killed the dog, and so we left.

My grandfather didnt come in the house. He turned around, and my father, a little boy, watched his father walk back up the hill. He stood at the bottom of the steps of the house, and he called the white man out. When he came out on the porch, he said, Dont you ever come out to the field. As long as you live, and as long as you shit between two legs, dont you ever come out to the field. When my grandfather said those things to that white man, he was taking a major risk. A man could be lynched back in that day, so my father, watching this, wondered what was going to happen to his father. The white man said to my grandfather: B. Lyons, you right. And Im sorry. My grandfather then turned around and walked back to the house. He told my father, Son, thats proof, if you stand for something, people will respect you. He used that example to illustrate that point. He said to me: You need to always be respectful. You need to always extend an olive branch, and you need to always understand that people may not like you, but you want respect versus like. So whatever you do, you do it to maintain respect.

My grandfathers story stayed with my father. My father passed his fathers story down to me, and his story stayed with me. It helped me through a lot of different things I went through as I grew up. My grandfather, largely on his own terms, reset the button for race relations, standing up for what he believed in during a time when it was dangerous to do sowhen it could have cost him his life. That largely determined my decisions later on, and over the course of my life, whether it was business or personal, it allowed me to press the reset button, causing me to make major changes and bring about necessary fixes in and throughout my life.

My father demonstrated that same air of respect throughout his life. I noted it as I observed his work with the air force, and in his life as a pastor. He stayed in the air force for many years. His job was to refuel the planes and work with the fuel lines. At one point, he was an entrepreneur. He demonstrated this level of respect when the air force wanted him to reside as chaplain, but he didnt want to be told what to preach, so he retired as a master sergeant and went on to preside over his own church, House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church in Fairbanks, Alaska. He was eventually offered an opportunity to preside over a larger church in Anchorage called New Hope Baptist Church.

My father died at the age of 59. He had a massive heart attack. I was in a meeting in

Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A coworker in the office tapped me on the shoulder and told me to come out into the hallway. He said to me, Look, I received a call. Your dad just had a massive heart attack, and they need you to get there. I dropped everything and flew fourteen hours from Fort Lauderdale to Anchorage, and I went straight to the hospital. My mother had not left his bedside. My siblings were already there. I was the last one in the room.

I asked my mother to go home and shower and get some rest. I told her I would pick it up from there. She went home. I saw my dad. He wouldnt eat. He looked at me as if to say he was glad I was there. I turned and walked to the doorway of the room. It seemed as if I only turned away for a second. No sooner was I at the door when I heard beeping noises.

The nurses ran into the room. They said my dad was gone. It was as if hed waited for me to come before he decided to go home. My mom was very upset. She said she should never have gone home. I encouraged her, letting her know that he had known when he was going to go home.

There were 3,500 people from all over the country in attendance at my fathers funeral. His church held about 600 members, so a sister church, First Baptist Church of Anchorage, opened its doors for the service. My father had become so influential in Alaska that a day was named after him called William B. Lyons Day, and a park was named after him called William B. Lyons Park.

My father not only influenced those around him, he influenced my life, as well. How I lived my life was truly based on how my father lived. His influence would play a role in my decision makingwith gain and loss.

Nevertheless, the core values and work ethic he and my mother instilled in me created the foundation, the standard for how I lived my life. That foundation, that standard, I believe, is how I would become the fixer.

Thats Harveys House: The Early Days

I was born on February 26, 1948, in a small town called Empire right outside of Birmingham, Alabama. I was the oldest of eight siblings. My mother was from the same place, but my father was from a small town called Burnwell, Alabama. I dont remember much about those days, being the ripe young age of four years old when my family moved to California. My father was a member of the air force, so we lived on Edwards Air Force base, where they flew the X-15 in the Bakersfield area, right around the Mojave Desert. We lived on that base for several years.

While we lived in California, we owned a laundromat. Thats probably where I got my bug for entrepreneurship. While my father conducted his military duties and managed businesses as a supervisor, my mother ran the laundromat. I played some ball while we lived out in California.

I didnt get to consider California my home for too long. I was only there for a few years, and then my father was shipped off to Fairbanks, Alaska. It was about 1960. We moved to Alaska a year after it became a state. My father was asked to be the pastor of a church, House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church. We lived in a small house off-base, and my father commuted back and forth to the base. My mother was a homemaker.

When my father retired from the air force in 1965, we werent by any means rich. When he joined the ministry, he went through some things. I can still visualize my house right now in Fairbanks. The house we had there, we would never have had in California. To me, it was a run-down shack. It had three bedrooms for my family: my parents and six kids. I was six years older than my next sibling, so my parents tried to respect my space and honor my privacy. My parents had a bedroom, I had a bedroom, and the rest of my siblings were all in bunk beds in the other bedroom. We had the kitchen, one bathroom, and a living room. The bathroom was so small that you had to back into it to use the restroom and shower. When the bus passed by our house, the kids would yell, Thats Harveys house! and laugh.