The Truth About Terrance

03.06.04

Terrance is dead. It was all Janice could get out over the phone. She lost it after that. For me, it was beyond comprehension. I was numb.

I flew to Chicago for the funeral. The service was held in a large baptist church deep in the southside...his church. It was a cold, windy day with rain spitting every so often. I arrived to long lines of people waiting to get in to see him. There were thousands (or it could have been hundreds, but I want to remember it as thousands) who showed up to pay respect to this man who was larger than life...a neighborhood hero and a friend who I called my brother.

"You work late" he would say years earlier with an infectious big beaming smile. He worked the maintenance night shift in my office building. He'd come by doing his rounds and strike up a friendly conversation. I learned he was working at night to pay for college during the day. He was studying criminal law, he wanted to be a cop. After a while, I was so impressed by his charm, confidence and curiosity that I asked if he would like to work for my group -- computer stuff. His resume was on my chair the next morning revealing that he had absolutely no real computer experience or related class work. My gut told me to hire him anyway, so I did. Two years later he was one of the country's experts in a special kind of computer mapping technology. This kid who was still finishing college, was training professionals who made well into the six figures how to use special mapping devices.

The truth about Terrance is simple: he was a born leader. People followed him because they believed he could change things...because he could bring people together to get things done and because he made people feel special every day. I saw him win over the harshest critics, angry co-workers and even racist ones. It was magic, a whole lot of magic.

He was also an entrepreneur. While working for me, finishing school, and caring for a wife and two boys, Terrance became a real estate developer. He somehow raised enough money to buy an old apartment building used as a crack house. Terrance worked with the Chicago PD to run out the junkies, dealers and gangs, and renovated it to provide low-income housing to struggling families.

I think you get the picture, Terrance was admired by me and pretty much everyone he came into contact with. I looked up to him.

In 2003, I moved out west, so I didn't get to see Terrance regularly anymore, but we stayed in touch because we had a special relationship...we were really like brothers in special sort of way - we believed in each other the way good family believes in each other. In fact, I have no doubt that if he were still alive today he would be running a successful business and probably even involved with Barack Obama's campaign in a leadership capacity. Or perhaps he'd be running for office himself. But Terrance's life was cut short - "not by a bullet from the gangs he ran out of neighborhoods" as his Mom told me at the funeral, but by an unexpected asthma attack that took his life.

I stood at the pulpit looking out over the crowd with people packed along the sides of the congregation, in the back and out the door. They sang, cried and bodies dropped to the floor in grief. I spoke about Terrance's map - the points of people whose lives he not only touched, but gave direction to. How when combined, they stitched together a map of his rich short life. I looked at the big man laying in the coffin and tried to contain my bitterness at losing not just my brother, but someone who was so damn good for the world.

Later at the cemetery, with cold rain and wind, I laid a bird of paradise flower on his coffin as they lowered it into the ground. It was the obvious choice amongst the other flowers scattered about.

Today, it still feels surreal, like he really can't be gone. Like I'm just waiting on a friend and he's going to show up any minute now.

That's the truth about Terrance.