THE GANTT REPORT, by Lucius Gantt
I hope all of The Gantt Report fathers enjoyed a pleasant and peaceful Father’s Day. There are some devilish dads in the world but TGR dads know how important fathers are.
Dad’s are, or should be, their daughter’s first love and their son’s true role model.
My dad, also named Lucius, was nick named “Scrap” because he was quick to throw some punches. He even beat up at least two of his work supervisors.
My parents made me who I am, so to speak. My friend, Rev. Herman Haynes, an associate Pastor at Piney Grove Church in Atlanta, said at my Mom’s Homegoing Service that “the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree” and I guess he was right.
I, perhaps, inherited my “sharp” tongue from my mother but my father taught me the ways of the streets and taught me to be fearless!
I knew my dad was a military veteran but he never discussed his service. My uncle, Arthur Gantt, told me my dad was in an all-Black unit.
Once I got a hold of his discharge papers, everything was revealed to me about his place in history.
My father served with the Tuskegee Airmen. The devil would lead you to believe that unit only had pilots. If you don’t know, Blacks did everything in support of the famous fighter pilots.
Lucius Gantt was an aircraft engineer. He and his crew made those raggedy planes fly as well as they did.
The reason, I assume, my father never spoke of his service or asked me to consider the military was because of the way Black soldiers were treated in the war and after they came home.
White aircraft engineers that were veterans got jobs with the commercial airlines after the war but the Black veteran aircraft engineers did not.
Anyway, my dad always wanted to have his own business. He taught me the values of being self- employed a very long time ago.
He said, “If I had $5000, I could start my own business”. He died about three months before I could give it to him.
I believe my father’s spirit has lived on inside of me and I’ve worked for myself since 1980 and I continue to be a self-made entrepreneur to this very day.
I told my family, my friends, my neighbors and everyone else that I would one day be financially independent like my father wanted to be and everyone said I was crazy because they judged me by my 1995 pickup truck or my current apartment in the crime riddled Vine City neighborhood in Atlanta.
Well, I started from the bottom, now I’m here! People that know me and trust me know where I’m coming from. I followed my dream, I learned my trade and pretty much taught myself how to do billion-dollar transactions.
I can go into detail about my status but I won’t. Too many people think that Oprah, Jay-Z and LeBron have all the money in the world but if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Carlos Slim and others awakened and discovered they only had the money Oprah had they would jump off the nearest bridge and commit suicide.
There is a banking, finance and business world that most Blacks and readers of The Gantt Report don’t even know exists.
But Lucius knows about it and if I say something about that high finance world, people, supposedly educated people like your business heroes (like Claud Anderson, Boyce Watkins, Killer Mike, etc.), will tell you I don’t know anything. Leonard Pitts and other columnists say I’m only a ranter and raver.
I’ll tell you who knows who knows about money, the beast bankers! Don’t trust Lucius, ask your banker who has passed Interpol investigations and background checks, who is involved in high financed business activities and who does business all around the world.
I always trusted Lucius. My father gave me a brain and a desire to accomplish and achieve.
I wish he was here with me today. We’d get a six pack of beer, cook some food and enjoy the Father’s Day Atlanta Hawks game.
Whatever I am and whatever I’ve done, I got it from my daddy, and mama!
Happy Father’s Day! Good fathers are fabulous! Teach your children the truth. Tell them how to survive in a capitalist and racist society!
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.