Published Friday, April 6, 2001
Repaying some debts through journalism
BY WILLIE J. ALLEN JR.
ASNE Reporter
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WILLIE J. ALLEN Jr.
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AGE: 40
HOMETOWN: San Diego
COLLEGE: San Francisco State University
YEAR: Senior |
I am a 40-year-old senior at San Francisco State University majoring in photojournalism.
My father was a chief petty officer in the Navy and my mother was a floor manager for the Navy Exchange store. I was born a Navy brat at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.
As we moved around from city to city, my parents were the only successful black people I knew. I didn’t have any other role models because my parents moved our family to quiet, suburban white neighborhoods with good schools.
I always felt a little different. One way I knew I was different was because people insisted that I wasn’t. When they saw me, they never saw black – they just saw Willie, they said.
When I was a sophomore in high school we moved to another nice suburban community. I played football and worked my way into the jock and student government cliques. One evening I went to a dance with some friends and danced with a cute girl named Sue. By the time the Commodores song “Three Times a Lady” was over, I was hopelessly in love and so was Sue.
We began talking on the phone after school, after football and swimming practice (I can smell the chlorine in her hair). We had a tougher time getting together. She was white and I was black and her parents didn’t believe in interracial dating.
So we met at a mutual friend’s house as often as possible and managed to date for four months. Then one day she told me her parents had given her an ultimatum: give up your car, your bank account and your diamond ring – or Willie.
That day I made a decision that no young person trying to figure out who and what he or she is should have to make. I tried to do the right thing for Sue and suggested we break up if it was going to cost her so much. We did. I didn’t know then that this one event would have so great an impact on my life and be one of the reasons it took me so long to become a journalist.
There seemed to be one simple truth in my life. I was black and it didn’t matter how much money I had, what neighborhood I lived in, my intelligence or skill on the playing field. I just wasn’t good enough to be equal.
Still, I kept playing sports, believing that if I were good at it I would be respected. I got a scholarship to play football at Idaho State University, and we won a national championship in Division I-AA. I still wasn’t happy and eventually I flunked out of college.
So I became a bartender, the life of the party. In 1994 I agreed to take a bartending job that required me to be on the road, working 16-hour days.
One Christmas Eve, after three months on the road, I called my family in San Diego to wish them a happy holiday. My 5-year-old niece Jacqueline came on the line and asked me if I would be home for Christmas. I began to cry.
Soon after, I decided that if I was going to make big personal sacrifices and work that hard, it would be for a career I absolutely loved. I first considered a career in photojournalism when I read Boys’ Life Magazine as a Cub Scout. At the time, I couldn’t imagine a better way to make a living than traveling to different places and sharing my experiences with others.
I decided to go back to school to study the thing that has called me since before I can remember. And I made an equally important decision to stop drinking to push my sorrows away.
I enrolled in San Francisco State University’s photojournalism program. But after a year I felt alone, without my family to support me, so I started drinking again and dropped out of school. Over the next four years I did the same thing, enroll and drop out, enroll and drop out. Finally, one day I had had enough. I knew I had to get back to school. I joined Alcoholics Anonymous on July 4, 2000. And now I’m a senior.
In October, I participated in the Missouri Photo Workshop sponsored by the University of Missouri and won the “Spirit of the Workshop Award.” This summer, I will do a summer internship at The San Diego Union Tribune, my hometown newspaper. And on Wednesday, while participating in the ASNE Reporter, I celebrated nine months of sobriety.
I owe my life to journalism because its calling was the single most important factor that got me sober. I can only pay my debt back by telling my story and other stories that must be told.
And hopefully I will be an example to my niece Jacqueline. I know she (and my daughter, nephews and other nieces) deserve to grow up without the same prejudices I faced that might stunt their self worth. I want them to believe in themselves and their heritage.
