College educated Curtis Johnson was seven years old when his mother died. He was raised from that time on by his father whose peripatetic way of life resulted in Curtis being passed around from one relative to another when he wasn’t living with his father, who he always held in the highest regard, which is why it took me a long time talking to him to understand what made his life go wrong and how he finally got himself back on track to being the productive man he is today.
Curtis’s mother, Ozie Mae Johnson, was born in Albany, Georgia and his father, Sanford Johnson, was born in Montgomery, Georgia. The two first met in Clearwater, Florida in about 1940, where their mothers had relocated (independently of each other) to work as nannies raising white children. His father, Sanford, joined the army at 15 by pretending to be 16 years old, the minimum age for joining the military. He and Ozzie Mae married in 1945 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Curtis’s great grandmother on his mother’s side, a Native American named Willy Lee Nelson, lived in New London, Connecticut where she had migrated from Georgia and worked as a nurse. She eventually purchased a home and relocated her two daughters and their families to New London where Curtis was born in 1967 well after his father had been honorably discharged from the Army. Curtis was the last of Sanford’s and Ozie Mae’s nine children.
It wasn’t a bad start for a poor Black family from Georgia. Curtis’s father worked at General Dynamics as a painter until he raised enough money to start his own auto body business and buy his own home in New London while his mother became a nurse. In 1974, when Curtis was only seven years old, the family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts where his father had purchased his mother’s dream home on Westford Avenue and Curtis attended Homer Elementary School. But, just seven days after the family moved into their new Westford Avenue home, Curtis’s mother, Ozzie Mae, died from an unexpected illness.
From then on, life for Curtis Johnson became complicated. He and his entire family were traumatized by his mother’s sudden death but never received any type of mental counseling but Curtis, the youngest by far, was probably the most affected and most in need of special attention. Instead, fighting and acting up in school became his mental outlet.
Only recently have Black folks – especially Black men – begun to view mental health as a real illness needing specialized treatment. It was considered unmanly to admit to being mentally traumatized and to admit being in need of professional help. The prescription for mental trauma among Black men was “get over it.” (It has always been my suspicion that merely being Black in America would qualify as mental trauma by the way White folks apply the term. I still haven’t fully grasped what White folks mean by a “nervous breakdown.” I’ve never met a Black person who talked about having one although I’m certain many have and didn’t know it or hid it.)
So, when Curtis Johnson told me that the only treatment he received for the trauma he suffered from his mother’s untimely death was puffs on his older brother’s marijuana cigarettes, I could relate to it just as I could relate to the fact that he started acting out his anguish in school by fighting fellow students while being regularly punished and further traumatized by teachers and administrators who were not trained to recognize and treat his sudden behavioral changes with a mental health approach.
Curtis’s father, although challenged by his own trauma that compelled him to sell their Westford Avenue home, had the presence of mind to think of his son’s best interest. Not only had Curtis’s mother passed but his father’s auto body business required him to travel all over a good part of the country on a regular basis. He traveled with a trailer full of his supplies and parts hooked up to his car and made a home out of wherever he ended up. It was no life for a youngster so he arranged for Curtis to stay with a series of relatives who he trusted. He regularly visited him and took care of his financial needs so Curtis never felt abandoned.
Yet, it was not a normal life for a youngster, especially for one who had recently lost his mother and was struggling to cope with unresolved trauma.
By his 5th grade, Curtis had left Springfield and Homer Elementary School and was living with his aunt and, occasionally, with his older sister in Connecticut while attending Harbor Elementary School and ended up leaving to live with his father in Washington, D.C. where he enrolled in another school. For the 6th grade, he returned to Connecticut where he re-enrolled in Harbor Elementary School and for the 7th and 8th grade, he attended Robert E. Lee Middle School in Orlando, Florida and finished out the 8th grade at Madeira Beach Middle School in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he excelled in football and wrestling, in which he became light heavy weight division county champion.
That’s a lot of locational and educational variety for a youngster but, amazingly, Curtis fared pretty well. He moved on to high school with ease, first attending Peabody High in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania while living with his cousin, Don “El Toro” Smith, a professional boxer who involved him in Golden Glove boxing, which lent a bit of discipline to Curtis’s still growing aggressive behavior. But Curtis’s father, uncomfortable with the living arrangement, moved Curtis, yet again, to Jackson, Mississippi where he completed his sophomore year while playing football at Provine High School.
Curtis finished his last two high school years living with his father in Jacksonville, Florida where he was an “all state” and “all conference” player on the Englewood High School football team for both years. He was also sports editor of the high school newspaper and he made the national honor society before graduating in 1985 with a full scholarship to Bethune-Cookman University. Even though he had two daughters born one month apart in his senior year, his life seemed to be headed for a dream ending.
Curtis attended Bethune-Cookman for one year before transferring to Georgia Southern University from where he graduated in 1989 and joined the U.S. Armed Forces, first as a naval reservist and later on active duty in the army where he served in an artillery unit. As Curtis explained it, he joined the army to see the world but, to his dismay, ended up stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, 40 minutes from the college he had graduated from, which turned out to be the beginning of a nightmare of events that could have destroyed him.
But it would be inaccurate to suggest Curtis’s troubles originated from his time in the army. They started long before that when his mother died. That first palliative puff of marijuana from his older brother when he was seven years old that temporarily lightened his pain without curing it, led to him smoking more regularly by the time he was nine years old and by the age of twelve he was a self-described “pot head.”
By his freshman year at college, the cocaine explosion hit. Curtis, like many other athletes and nonathletes, nursed the mistaken notion that cocaine improved his performance. And, he was soon mixing the cocaine with alcohol. The coaches knew what was going on with him and the other players but looked the other way because the team performed. But at some point, before graduating college, Curtis’s performance declined and he lost his starting position and was moved to special teams.
The army didn’t change Curtis’s behavior except that it made him a bit more discreet. He continued smoking marijuana and occasionally used cocaine but his alcohol intake increased. But, like his college coaches, the army coddled him because he was a star on its semi-pro football team. He didn’t have to do much combat training which left him plenty of free time that he often unwisely chose to spend in his old college haunts.
You may recall Curtis was stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia not far from his alma mater, Georgia Southern, and within easy reach of the Savannah State College campus. He would often visit the campuses and hang out with old friends at local bars including many located in rough places he “shouldn’t have been.” He was getting into fights, drinking and taking drugs until he ended up in jail in Macon, Georgia for relatively minor stuff (assault and battery, resisting arrest) but serious enough that his father had to bail him out and the army placed him on restrictions. And the Macon court judge gave him a short period of probation.
When he was honorably discharged from the army, Curtis returned to Connecticut where things got worse. He hung out with tough folks, many of whom were breaking the law in ways that would result in severe consequences, but Curtis never became involved in the real bad stuff. His downfall came from his loyalty to his crowd and his willingness to fight when the fight started and to defend his friends (as the enforcer), which led to frequent encounters with the law and many relatively minor arrests and some more serious assaults on police officers until the accumulation of encounters with the law landed him in prison in the late 1990s for 28 months as a frequent offender.
The authorities could have handled Curtis’s situation with less harsh diversionary help. But that’s not how things were handled in those days. Even so, that twenty-eight months of incarceration was the best thing that ever happened to Curtis Johnson. It forced him to look inside of himself, take an assessment and make essential adjustments, including accepting help and adopting what can best be called a “purpose-driven” life.
Curtis could have fallen off the cliff’s edge. And he almost did. And many in society would have expected it of him. And his life would have been just another statistic, another dramatic headline. But he didn’t fall off the edge. Instead, he has become, in vocation and avocation, the inspiration and hope for countless other young people who might otherwise have been counted out.
His change was dramatic, impactful and permanent and a story in and of itself. And, in the March issue of Point of View, our 20th anniversary issue which is dedicated to “Perseverance,” I will describe for you what he did, how he did it and why he still does it. ■