February 25, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, meet Ron Brown, a man who grew up in a rough area of Chicago, was practically abandoned by his father, and would mend their relationship later in life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot Com.
There's some of our favorites. And we love to tell
(00:30):
stories about faith whenever we can and redemption. And this
is one of our best redemption stories, brought to us
by our very own Joey Cortes. Ron Brown grew up
on the West Side of Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I grew up in a family where my uncles were
drug dealers and pimps, and I saw that growing up
as a kid, and it never appealed to me. I
can remember as a kid seeing my uncles get shot
and different things like that, and you know, one guy
tried to murder my uncle and and just seeing it
and just being a kid like five, six, seven, eight,
(01:06):
nine years old growing up being like this ain't the
way this is supposed to be. I watched certain stories
and kids say growing up in the inner city, how
they saw drug dealers and that's the only people they saw,
and for them, they saw that as a means to
an end. To get out the ghetto or as a kid.
I don't know what God blessed me with, but he
blessed me with the ability to see that I was
(01:26):
wrong and that wasn't the way for me to go
about my life.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
He was also blessed with a strong mother who divorced
his biological father. When Ron was a kid, I can.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Remember he was a part of an accident for his scheme,
and I remember being a kid telling him. I was like, hey, man,
you're gonna get in trouble. He'd say, son, you know what,
I'm making my living the best way I know how.
And eventually he ended up going to prison for a
few years for that. And I can remember being a
kid and him writing me letters and saying, hey, you know,
when I get out, things are going to be different.
I'm going to spend more time with you. I think
(01:59):
it's important. And the thing was, he got out and
nothing never changed. He went back to what he knew
and he ended up being in the streets for a
few more years and he went to jail. My dad
was like the real you ever seen the movie Catch
Me if you can? He was like, the real, catch
me if you can? You understand what I'm saying when
he came to doing checks and stuff like that, and
so I can remember having that example from a very
(02:19):
young age and seeing all the cars and houses and
I was like, it just never appealed to me. My
mother was fortunate enough, and I was fortunate enough. She
got married when I was about three or four years
old to a great man by the name of Lawrence Hunt,
and he was my stepfather, and he did everything in
his power to just raise me the right way. And
I'm so appreciative for the influence. Even right now as
(02:42):
a forty five year old man, I think about the
lessons in what he taught me and just different things
about manhood and responsibility and all those things. And so
I think having a father made a drastic difference in
my life. My mother was a pretty tough lady. She's
about six two sixty three and she didn't play, and
my stepfather was about six or five eat and played.
(03:03):
So I grew up in a home where my parents
were really about education. I remember being a kid and saying, hey,
you know, I want to be a professional athlete. I
want to do this, I want to do that, and
my parents were always like, look, that's a great goal.
But let me give you an amazing dream. Whatever you
can do with your mind instead of your body will
facilitate you to have a very, very lengthy career. I
(03:25):
can remember my father getting tickets to take me to
go see the Chicago Bulls and I was sitting there
watching them playing, and Michael Jordan was lighting them up
that night the arena, everybody was yelling and screaming, and
I'm eating my popcorn and I'm looking and I got
a pretzel on one hand and popcorn on the floor
and drinking and drinking on having my best time ever.
And he tapped me on the shoulders when the Bulls
call the time out, and he said, so to me,
(03:46):
ask you something. I said, what he says, who has
the greatest job in this whole arena? And I kind
of looked at him because I thought it was a
crazy question. And I was like, Michael Jordan. And he
tapped me on the shoulder and he said, you see
that box up there with those guys walking around eat
those hot dogs? And I said, yeah. He says, they
have the best job in the building. They're the ones
(04:06):
who pay Michael Jordan. And so even though people may
not be screaming for him. They're the reason why all
this is going on. So I want you to learn
the big picture approach to life. And so that just
really kind of got me thinking in light. They said,
you know what, Mike's gonna retire one day, but the
bulls are still going to be here. Mike's gonna have
an injury one day, but guess what, the bulls are
still going to be here. And he's like, that's what
(04:26):
I'm getting. I want to I want you to learn
about life being the guy that's still there as transitions
continue to happen through life. And that lesson really really
stayed with me all through life. My father, i'm gonna
tell you something. It wasn't a good experience with him
growing up, but those bad experiences with him made me,
i think today, a much better father. So he would say, hey,
(04:48):
I'm gonna pick you up, you know, so get dressed,
we're gonna go. We're gonna hang out for the day.
And so my mother would say, hey, look, no, don't
make this kid promises. And you and I show up,
and I can remember one particular time getting dressed up up.
I mean I had on my pants and my shirt
and my tie. I page, and he called me and
I said, hey, I'm ready. He says, okay, I'll beat
it in a little while. And I can remember sitting in
the window dressed up and waiting on my father to come,
(05:10):
and waiting on him to come until the point that
I fell asleep, and my stepfather picking me up and
putting me to bed and taking my shoes off, and
kind of woke up. As he was picking me up.
I said, did he come? He said, no, he didn't come.
He says, but you know what, I'm here. And I
always remember that memory, you know, And so for me
anything with my children, I don't care if it's a
(05:34):
basketball game, I don't care if it's a football game.
If I tell him I'm coming, I'm coming. And so
through the years, I never hated my father because he
was my father, but I didn't understand. And so with
that I was able to find out how he grew
up that, you know. His father one day said he
was going out to the store to go get a
pack of cigarettes, and he asked him and his brother
(05:54):
what did he want, and they said they wanted some candy.
He said, okay, I'll be back. His father never came back.
He had been like six five or six. He never
saw his father again. And so at that point I
kind of realized that my father didn't know how to
be a father because he never had that example. So
I grew up with those things, and I'll tell you something.
Of course they shaped you, but I didn't let him
(06:16):
break me. And I think some of these situations in
our lives they break us and they turned us into
broken people. And so from from that moment on in
my life, as I went up, I had it. Like
I said, I had a great stepfather. I was just
very determined that I would never do that till my kids.
And so no child of mine can say, hey, I
sat there on the doorstep and waited for my dad
to come, and he didn't come. And that's important to me.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And you're listening to Ron Brown and his real dad,
his biological dad, well he was a character right out
to catch me, if you can, just a black version,
passing checks, living a bad life, making bad choices. We
grew up though, in a home that was all about education,
a stepdad that really loved him, right, he said, those
bad experience with my biological father made me a better father,
(07:04):
and I never hated my father. I didn't understand him
until I learned about how he grew up his father's father.
When he was five or six years old, went to
the corner store and never came back. When we come back,
more of Ron Brown's stores here on our American Stores. Folks,
(07:29):
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
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Go to our American Stories dot com now and go
(07:50):
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com and
we're back with our American Stories and Ron Brown's story.
(08:13):
We left off with Ron describing his difficult relationship with
his absent father and the lessons he learned from that.
Back to run with the rest of this story.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The funny story about it is that he came to
my high school graduation in Holy Trendy and he made
a big deal about it, and he told me he
was so proud of me for graduating high school. And
I think I saw him a little bit over that summer,
and I never saw him again. I didn't see him
again until twenty years later, which is really kind of
crazy because he had a brother and his brother had died,
(08:46):
and so I think I was living in Atlanta at
the time, and I got word that my father had died,
and I thought he had actually died, but it was
kind of some confusion, so for years I thought he
was dead. A few summers after that, my wife sent
some information in Firs to be on the fan, and
so we become contestants on the Family Feud with Steve Harvey,
and they tape it up in Atlanta and we go
(09:06):
ahead and we have this show and we lose by
one question, and we were like, man, we came all
the way up here. We had a good time, but
it would have been nice if we would have won.
And so this is why I think about how everything
happens for a reason. Well fast four years later, because
after you do a Family Feud episode, they keep playing
the episode over and over and over and over and
over again, and so it stays in rotation for years.
(09:29):
And so I had just started law school and I
was making a trek from Atlanta to Birmingham three nights
a week for school. And it was one particular night
I was leaving criminal law class and I get a
phone call from a number I'd never seen before. And
I was like, who's just calling me this late? It's
about I don't know, eight thirty nine o'clock at night,
and I answered the phone and it's just something about
(09:50):
your parents' voice. You never forget it. And even though
I hadn't heard my father's voice for twenty plus years,
the phone rings and I answer it and he says, hello, son,
And at that moment, I just broke down and cried.
I had to pull over to the side of the
road of Highway twenty and I was like Dad, and
he was like, son, I've been looking for you. And
(10:11):
I was like, I've been looking for you. I was like,
how did you get my number? And it was a
ray of emotions and I was crying and he was crying,
and he said, you know, I went did some time,
and you know, I lost track of you when I
got out, and I didn't know where you were. He said,
I always knew you. You always said you wanted to be
in business. You want to be a businessman. And I
looked and looked, and he says, I'm gonna tell you something.
I actually was sitting down with my girlfriend the other night.
(10:33):
We were watching Family Feud. He says, I never watched
Family Feud. It's her favorite show. And it came to
you and you said your name, and he said, that's
my son, and she said that's not your She He's like, no,
that's my son. That's who I've been looking for. That's
my son. He's like, she didn't believe me. He says, well,
what he did was he listened to my mother in law,
Don White. When you do that, the family, they ask
(10:53):
you what do you do and where do you live
and all that. And so at that moment in time,
she was a senior VP for Coca Cola, and she
said that, and so his girlfriend and him called Coca Cola.
They got in contact with her and she did some
vetting and I didn't even know this was going on,
but she did some vetting and to make sure who
he said he was. And then they called my wife
and they went on three way and my wife was like,
(11:14):
we thought you were dead, and he's like, no, that's
my brother. And they gave him my number and we
talked for about an hour and I just told him,
you know what, despite everything in the world, I still
love you and you're my father. You're the reason why
I'm here. And that was very important to me because
I lost my mother back when I was twenty seven
years old. So him and I kind of reconnected when
I was probably like around thirty eight, and so that
(11:36):
was a powerful moment for me because as a man,
even though I had a wife and a children, I had,
you still feel a level of loneliness because my parents.
You know, I felt that both my parents were going,
and it just I would always ask myself, well, who
buries me? You know, if something happens to me, you know,
I guess with him. But due to the fact that
he was still alive, we went ahead and put our
relationship back together that night. I actually ended up flying
(11:56):
to go see him two days later, and I spent
my birthday with him. But I can give you irony
of that.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Though.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
My wife had had our second son, Jackson, and so
she said, what do you want to name? When we
got some names, I said, we want to name hi Jackson,
I said, but his middle name is going to be Owing.
And so my wife was very surprised. She was like,
why would you name him on your father? And you
guys don't have the best relationship, Why would you name
it Onwen? I said, you know what, despite us not
having the greatest relationship, I still loved my father and
(12:25):
I wanted him to be better, and at that time
in his life maybe he couldn't be. I said, but
you know what, I forgive him for everything that's happened
in my life. I just forgive him, and I can't
hold on to it. And I said, you know, Jackson
Owen Brown, you know he'll make that name good. This
kid will never go to the penitentiary. This kid'll do
something great with his life and don't have his grandfather's name.
And so my wife thought that was very powerful and
(12:46):
she said, okay, his name would be Jackson Owen Brown. Well,
the irony of that is that my son was born
like about two weeks before my father came back in
my life. So I don't know if people think about
life and let things go and getting right with God
or getting right with who you are as an individual.
But I actually believe in my heart that of me
(13:08):
making that decision to forgive my father for everything that
happened to past, every heard, every hardship, every disappointment, and
giving my youngest son his name, I think for somewhere
that opened the door and that allowed us to find
each other. And that's been seven years ago, and so
now we talk every other day. That's my guy. He
(13:29):
came to my law school graduation and he was very
proud and he looked and said, you know what, to
see how I did everything wrong in life and to
see that you did so much right, I'm just so
proud of you. So that's a big part of my journey.
So even though he didn't start off being the most
amazing dad in the world, years later he's become a
great great great a great dad, and a great grandfather.
(13:53):
You know, something my parents would always see me. My
mom always talking me was the importance of forgiveness. That
nobody's perfect. Everyone does something wrong, and she would always
talk about, you know, when Jesus wuld say who could
throw the first stone? And no one can throw the
first stone. And even though he didn't get it right,
I was open to allowing him to get it right.
I was open. I think you have to be open
sometimes and it's a big thing you have to forgive
(14:15):
because here you are carrying that around with you. I
just really think that it just really really erodes your spirit.
It erodes everything in you because you're carrying around the
baggage and the hurt of something that happened years and
years and years ago. And when you can't get over
it and you can't move past it, it keeps you
locked in that place. One of my good friends, he's
a mentor of mine, he always said that anger is
(14:38):
a wasted emotion. Anger will cost you a lot in
your life. There are a lot of people sitting the
penitentiary right now because they were angry in a second
and they did something that if they could take back,
they would. And so I just learned the importance of
just you can't hold on to it. Sometimes you got
to move on and move past it, but you can't
hold on to it because it keeps you stuck. So
(14:58):
there's a line in the Bible Jesus said, how many
times should you forgive somebody? And it's an enormous numbers,
like sixty times, sixty times. You know, it's really kind
of crazy that that's what the Lord and Savior says
that you should. And I'll give you the greatest story
of that is that Jesus knew that Judas was going
to be a judas. You know, Jesus knew that he
(15:21):
was going to be betrayed by Judas, but Jesus still
continued the journey with him. And so it was all
the fact that he knew he was going to betray him,
but he still loved him. And that's an important message
right there. He still loved him. He knew he was
going to do what he did, but he still loved
(15:42):
him and he kept him around. If you read the Bible,
you know there was a points where, you know, they
kind of felt that he was stealing, but Jesus was
so in love with the man and the relationship that
that didn't even matter. And that's pretty tough in this
day and age someone to still loves someone even though
that's the way it is. But you know what I
equate that to like a true father's love. You know,
our kids don't always do what we want them to do.
(16:02):
They'll always go the way we want them to go,
but there's still our children and we still love them,
and we still desire relationships with them, and we still
wish them well. And I think that's how God looks
at us on the throne, even though we get up
in the morning and maybe we have great intentions, and
some people have bad intentions, but they go out here
and they do things. But He's still in love with you.
He's still in love with who you are. And the
(16:23):
door's always open for you to come back. There's nothing
you've done that's been too enormous that God can't forget.
And I think that's the most powerful thing about the
Christian faith, is that the door's always open for you.
And I'm nowhere near Jesus Christ. I'm nowhere near God.
But I've learned the importance of keeping the door open
because people can't change. People can't change.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What a message from Ron Brown, and when faith is
a part of people's lives, we put it right out there.
And his forgiveness, which came straight from his faith, well
it opened the door. And my goodness, what a door
it opened. And my goodness, what he did with his
wife just weeks before, wanting to name his son after
the father that was never there, with a middle name
(17:09):
and the wife saying what gives, and him walking through
that he'd forgiven his own dad and teaching his wife
the power of forgiveness. And two weeks later that call comes,
I've been looking for you, Hello, son, And he said,
I just cried. Some of us believe in coincidence, some
of us believe in fate and destiny, and some of
(17:31):
us believe in God. And for believers, that's a God moment,
a God wink. If ever there is one. Ron Brown's story,
and we'd love to hear yours. Send your stories to
our American stories dot com. That's our American stories dot com.
Ron Brown's story a beauty here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot Com.
There's some of our favorites. And we love to tell
(00:30):
stories about faith whenever we can and redemption. And this
is one of our best redemption stories, brought to us
by our very own Joey Cortes. Ron Brown grew up
on the West Side of Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I grew up in a family where my uncles were
drug dealers and pimps, and I saw that growing up
as a kid, and it never appealed to me. I
can remember as a kid seeing my uncles get shot
and different things like that, and you know, one guy
tried to murder my uncle and and just seeing it
and just being a kid like five, six, seven, eight,
(01:06):
nine years old growing up being like this ain't the
way this is supposed to be. I watched certain stories
and kids say growing up in the inner city, how
they saw drug dealers and that's the only people they saw,
and for them, they saw that as a means to
an end. To get out the ghetto or as a kid.
I don't know what God blessed me with, but he
blessed me with the ability to see that I was
(01:26):
wrong and that wasn't the way for me to go
about my life.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
He was also blessed with a strong mother who divorced
his biological father. When Ron was a kid, I can.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Remember he was a part of an accident for his scheme,
and I remember being a kid telling him. I was like, hey, man,
you're gonna get in trouble. He'd say, son, you know what,
I'm making my living the best way I know how.
And eventually he ended up going to prison for a
few years for that. And I can remember being a
kid and him writing me letters and saying, hey, you know,
when I get out, things are going to be different.
I'm going to spend more time with you. I think
(01:59):
it's important. And the thing was, he got out and
nothing never changed. He went back to what he knew
and he ended up being in the streets for a
few more years and he went to jail. My dad
was like the real you ever seen the movie Catch
Me if you can? He was like, the real, catch
me if you can? You understand what I'm saying when
he came to doing checks and stuff like that, and
so I can remember having that example from a very
(02:19):
young age and seeing all the cars and houses and
I was like, it just never appealed to me. My
mother was fortunate enough, and I was fortunate enough. She
got married when I was about three or four years
old to a great man by the name of Lawrence Hunt,
and he was my stepfather, and he did everything in
his power to just raise me the right way. And
I'm so appreciative for the influence. Even right now as
(02:42):
a forty five year old man, I think about the
lessons in what he taught me and just different things
about manhood and responsibility and all those things. And so
I think having a father made a drastic difference in
my life. My mother was a pretty tough lady. She's
about six two sixty three and she didn't play, and
my stepfather was about six or five eat and played.
(03:03):
So I grew up in a home where my parents
were really about education. I remember being a kid and saying, hey,
you know, I want to be a professional athlete. I
want to do this, I want to do that, and
my parents were always like, look, that's a great goal.
But let me give you an amazing dream. Whatever you
can do with your mind instead of your body will
facilitate you to have a very, very lengthy career. I
(03:25):
can remember my father getting tickets to take me to
go see the Chicago Bulls and I was sitting there
watching them playing, and Michael Jordan was lighting them up
that night the arena, everybody was yelling and screaming, and
I'm eating my popcorn and I'm looking and I got
a pretzel on one hand and popcorn on the floor
and drinking and drinking on having my best time ever.
And he tapped me on the shoulders when the Bulls
call the time out, and he said, so to me,
(03:46):
ask you something. I said, what he says, who has
the greatest job in this whole arena? And I kind
of looked at him because I thought it was a
crazy question. And I was like, Michael Jordan. And he
tapped me on the shoulder and he said, you see
that box up there with those guys walking around eat
those hot dogs? And I said, yeah. He says, they
have the best job in the building. They're the ones
(04:06):
who pay Michael Jordan. And so even though people may
not be screaming for him. They're the reason why all
this is going on. So I want you to learn
the big picture approach to life. And so that just
really kind of got me thinking in light. They said,
you know what, Mike's gonna retire one day, but the
bulls are still going to be here. Mike's gonna have
an injury one day, but guess what, the bulls are
still going to be here. And he's like, that's what
(04:26):
I'm getting. I want to I want you to learn
about life being the guy that's still there as transitions
continue to happen through life. And that lesson really really
stayed with me all through life. My father, i'm gonna
tell you something. It wasn't a good experience with him
growing up, but those bad experiences with him made me,
i think today, a much better father. So he would say, hey,
(04:48):
I'm gonna pick you up, you know, so get dressed,
we're gonna go. We're gonna hang out for the day.
And so my mother would say, hey, look, no, don't
make this kid promises. And you and I show up,
and I can remember one particular time getting dressed up up.
I mean I had on my pants and my shirt
and my tie. I page, and he called me and
I said, hey, I'm ready. He says, okay, I'll beat
it in a little while. And I can remember sitting in
the window dressed up and waiting on my father to come,
(05:10):
and waiting on him to come until the point that
I fell asleep, and my stepfather picking me up and
putting me to bed and taking my shoes off, and
kind of woke up. As he was picking me up.
I said, did he come? He said, no, he didn't come.
He says, but you know what, I'm here. And I
always remember that memory, you know, And so for me
anything with my children, I don't care if it's a
(05:34):
basketball game, I don't care if it's a football game.
If I tell him I'm coming, I'm coming. And so
through the years, I never hated my father because he
was my father, but I didn't understand. And so with
that I was able to find out how he grew
up that, you know. His father one day said he
was going out to the store to go get a
pack of cigarettes, and he asked him and his brother
(05:54):
what did he want, and they said they wanted some candy.
He said, okay, I'll be back. His father never came back.
He had been like six five or six. He never
saw his father again. And so at that point I
kind of realized that my father didn't know how to
be a father because he never had that example. So
I grew up with those things, and I'll tell you something.
Of course they shaped you, but I didn't let him
(06:16):
break me. And I think some of these situations in
our lives they break us and they turned us into
broken people. And so from from that moment on in
my life, as I went up, I had it. Like
I said, I had a great stepfather. I was just
very determined that I would never do that till my kids.
And so no child of mine can say, hey, I
sat there on the doorstep and waited for my dad
to come, and he didn't come. And that's important to me.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And you're listening to Ron Brown and his real dad,
his biological dad, well he was a character right out
to catch me, if you can, just a black version,
passing checks, living a bad life, making bad choices. We
grew up though, in a home that was all about education,
a stepdad that really loved him, right, he said, those
bad experience with my biological father made me a better father,
(07:04):
and I never hated my father. I didn't understand him
until I learned about how he grew up his father's father.
When he was five or six years old, went to
the corner store and never came back. When we come back,
more of Ron Brown's stores here on our American Stores. Folks,
(07:29):
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American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com and
we're back with our American Stories and Ron Brown's story.
(08:13):
We left off with Ron describing his difficult relationship with
his absent father and the lessons he learned from that.
Back to run with the rest of this story.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The funny story about it is that he came to
my high school graduation in Holy Trendy and he made
a big deal about it, and he told me he
was so proud of me for graduating high school. And
I think I saw him a little bit over that summer,
and I never saw him again. I didn't see him
again until twenty years later, which is really kind of
crazy because he had a brother and his brother had died,
(08:46):
and so I think I was living in Atlanta at
the time, and I got word that my father had died,
and I thought he had actually died, but it was
kind of some confusion, so for years I thought he
was dead. A few summers after that, my wife sent
some information in Firs to be on the fan, and
so we become contestants on the Family Feud with Steve Harvey,
and they tape it up in Atlanta and we go
(09:06):
ahead and we have this show and we lose by
one question, and we were like, man, we came all
the way up here. We had a good time, but
it would have been nice if we would have won.
And so this is why I think about how everything
happens for a reason. Well fast four years later, because
after you do a Family Feud episode, they keep playing
the episode over and over and over and over and
over again, and so it stays in rotation for years.
(09:29):
And so I had just started law school and I
was making a trek from Atlanta to Birmingham three nights
a week for school. And it was one particular night
I was leaving criminal law class and I get a
phone call from a number I'd never seen before. And
I was like, who's just calling me this late? It's
about I don't know, eight thirty nine o'clock at night,
and I answered the phone and it's just something about
(09:50):
your parents' voice. You never forget it. And even though
I hadn't heard my father's voice for twenty plus years,
the phone rings and I answer it and he says, hello, son,
And at that moment, I just broke down and cried.
I had to pull over to the side of the
road of Highway twenty and I was like Dad, and
he was like, son, I've been looking for you. And
(10:11):
I was like, I've been looking for you. I was like,
how did you get my number? And it was a
ray of emotions and I was crying and he was crying,
and he said, you know, I went did some time,
and you know, I lost track of you when I
got out, and I didn't know where you were. He said,
I always knew you. You always said you wanted to be
in business. You want to be a businessman. And I
looked and looked, and he says, I'm gonna tell you something.
I actually was sitting down with my girlfriend the other night.
(10:33):
We were watching Family Feud. He says, I never watched
Family Feud. It's her favorite show. And it came to
you and you said your name, and he said, that's
my son, and she said that's not your She He's like, no,
that's my son. That's who I've been looking for. That's
my son. He's like, she didn't believe me. He says, well,
what he did was he listened to my mother in law,
Don White. When you do that, the family, they ask
(10:53):
you what do you do and where do you live
and all that. And so at that moment in time,
she was a senior VP for Coca Cola, and she
said that, and so his girlfriend and him called Coca Cola.
They got in contact with her and she did some
vetting and I didn't even know this was going on,
but she did some vetting and to make sure who
he said he was. And then they called my wife
and they went on three way and my wife was like,
(11:14):
we thought you were dead, and he's like, no, that's
my brother. And they gave him my number and we
talked for about an hour and I just told him,
you know what, despite everything in the world, I still
love you and you're my father. You're the reason why
I'm here. And that was very important to me because
I lost my mother back when I was twenty seven
years old. So him and I kind of reconnected when
I was probably like around thirty eight, and so that
(11:36):
was a powerful moment for me because as a man,
even though I had a wife and a children, I had,
you still feel a level of loneliness because my parents.
You know, I felt that both my parents were going,
and it just I would always ask myself, well, who
buries me? You know, if something happens to me, you know,
I guess with him. But due to the fact that
he was still alive, we went ahead and put our
relationship back together that night. I actually ended up flying
(11:56):
to go see him two days later, and I spent
my birthday with him. But I can give you irony
of that.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Though.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
My wife had had our second son, Jackson, and so
she said, what do you want to name? When we
got some names, I said, we want to name hi Jackson,
I said, but his middle name is going to be Owing.
And so my wife was very surprised. She was like,
why would you name him on your father? And you
guys don't have the best relationship, Why would you name
it Onwen? I said, you know what, despite us not
having the greatest relationship, I still loved my father and
(12:25):
I wanted him to be better, and at that time
in his life maybe he couldn't be. I said, but
you know what, I forgive him for everything that's happened
in my life. I just forgive him, and I can't
hold on to it. And I said, you know, Jackson
Owen Brown, you know he'll make that name good. This
kid will never go to the penitentiary. This kid'll do
something great with his life and don't have his grandfather's name.
And so my wife thought that was very powerful and
(12:46):
she said, okay, his name would be Jackson Owen Brown. Well,
the irony of that is that my son was born
like about two weeks before my father came back in
my life. So I don't know if people think about
life and let things go and getting right with God
or getting right with who you are as an individual.
But I actually believe in my heart that of me
(13:08):
making that decision to forgive my father for everything that
happened to past, every heard, every hardship, every disappointment, and
giving my youngest son his name, I think for somewhere
that opened the door and that allowed us to find
each other. And that's been seven years ago, and so
now we talk every other day. That's my guy. He
(13:29):
came to my law school graduation and he was very
proud and he looked and said, you know what, to
see how I did everything wrong in life and to
see that you did so much right, I'm just so
proud of you. So that's a big part of my journey.
So even though he didn't start off being the most
amazing dad in the world, years later he's become a
great great great a great dad, and a great grandfather.
(13:53):
You know, something my parents would always see me. My
mom always talking me was the importance of forgiveness. That
nobody's perfect. Everyone does something wrong, and she would always
talk about, you know, when Jesus wuld say who could
throw the first stone? And no one can throw the
first stone. And even though he didn't get it right,
I was open to allowing him to get it right.
I was open. I think you have to be open
sometimes and it's a big thing you have to forgive
(14:15):
because here you are carrying that around with you. I
just really think that it just really really erodes your spirit.
It erodes everything in you because you're carrying around the
baggage and the hurt of something that happened years and
years and years ago. And when you can't get over
it and you can't move past it, it keeps you
locked in that place. One of my good friends, he's
a mentor of mine, he always said that anger is
(14:38):
a wasted emotion. Anger will cost you a lot in
your life. There are a lot of people sitting the
penitentiary right now because they were angry in a second
and they did something that if they could take back,
they would. And so I just learned the importance of
just you can't hold on to it. Sometimes you got
to move on and move past it, but you can't
hold on to it because it keeps you stuck. So
(14:58):
there's a line in the Bible Jesus said, how many
times should you forgive somebody? And it's an enormous numbers,
like sixty times, sixty times. You know, it's really kind
of crazy that that's what the Lord and Savior says
that you should. And I'll give you the greatest story
of that is that Jesus knew that Judas was going
to be a judas. You know, Jesus knew that he
(15:21):
was going to be betrayed by Judas, but Jesus still
continued the journey with him. And so it was all
the fact that he knew he was going to betray him,
but he still loved him. And that's an important message
right there. He still loved him. He knew he was
going to do what he did, but he still loved
(15:42):
him and he kept him around. If you read the Bible,
you know there was a points where, you know, they
kind of felt that he was stealing, but Jesus was
so in love with the man and the relationship that
that didn't even matter. And that's pretty tough in this
day and age someone to still loves someone even though
that's the way it is. But you know what I
equate that to like a true father's love. You know,
our kids don't always do what we want them to do.
(16:02):
They'll always go the way we want them to go,
but there's still our children and we still love them,
and we still desire relationships with them, and we still
wish them well. And I think that's how God looks
at us on the throne, even though we get up
in the morning and maybe we have great intentions, and
some people have bad intentions, but they go out here
and they do things. But He's still in love with you.
He's still in love with who you are. And the
(16:23):
door's always open for you to come back. There's nothing
you've done that's been too enormous that God can't forget.
And I think that's the most powerful thing about the
Christian faith, is that the door's always open for you.
And I'm nowhere near Jesus Christ. I'm nowhere near God.
But I've learned the importance of keeping the door open
because people can't change. People can't change.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What a message from Ron Brown, and when faith is
a part of people's lives, we put it right out there.
And his forgiveness, which came straight from his faith, well
it opened the door. And my goodness, what a door
it opened. And my goodness, what he did with his
wife just weeks before, wanting to name his son after
the father that was never there, with a middle name
(17:09):
and the wife saying what gives, and him walking through
that he'd forgiven his own dad and teaching his wife
the power of forgiveness. And two weeks later that call comes,
I've been looking for you, Hello, son, And he said,
I just cried. Some of us believe in coincidence, some
of us believe in fate and destiny, and some of
(17:31):
us believe in God. And for believers, that's a God moment,
a God wink. If ever there is one. Ron Brown's story,
and we'd love to hear yours. Send your stories to
our American stories dot com. That's our American stories dot com.
Ron Brown's story a beauty here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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