Contact, Community, Compassion
Allies, friends, and contacts from various communities help create conditions for everyone to thrive—they are what I might call “Skilled Operators of an Inclusion System.”
My dad, Larry Johnson Sr., grew up in an era where openness to gay people just wasn't a thing.
In the 1940s and 50s, as he grew up, the whole idea of openly gay relationships, or even acknowledging someone in your family who was gay, just wasn't something that happened. This was especially the case in the African-American community. It was even more so the case in Topeka, KS (USA) where my father grew up. Add to that the fact that our family was deeply Christian in an era where homosexuality was openly talked about as deeply sinful and unquestionably wrong.
My dad finished high school in 1959 and always wanted to be a mortician, so he decided to attend mortuary science school. After the military (Marines) and attending college for biochemistry, he went to mortuary school in California to complete his Master of Mortuary Science training and then returned to Topeka. This was his life until he was 28 years old.
He decided he wanted to buy a business and started doing so when he was about 29 years old.
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