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Fountain Joins Journalists' Panel
Laquan McDonald Case
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National Public Radio
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Dear Dad
Reflections on Fatherhood
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King Day Speaker 2012
North Lawndale Community & Jewish Federation
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Wisconsin State King Day Speaker
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| CLICK ON PHOTO TO VIEW VIDEO |
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No Place for Me
By John W. Fountain
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Sunday
morning arrived, like so many before, with a mix of sunlight and chirping birds
outside my bedroom window and a warm greeting from my tiny son, lying beside my
wife and me. My wife rose quickly, announcing her plan to jump in the shower
and get ready for Sunday school at the Baptist church, not far from our house
in suburban Chicago, that she and our two children attend.
As for me,
in what has become my ritual nowadays, I turned over and pulled the covers up
around my head. Soon I overheard my 9-year-old daughter's familiar question:
"Mommy, is Daddy going to church with us?"
"No-o-o-o,"
my wife replied. After months of my failure to accompany them, she has
abandoned the excuse that "Daddy has a lot of work to do."
Sunday mornings used to
mean something special to me. But I now face them with dread, with a
bittersweet sorrow that tugs at my heart and a headache-inducing tension that
makes me reach for the Advil. I am torn between my desire to play hooky from
church and my Pentecostal indoctrination that Sunday is the Lord's day, a day
of worship when real men are supposed to lead their families into the house of
God.
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Chicago Public Radio
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| CLICK PHOTO TO LISTEN TO FOUNTAIN'S WBEZ INTERVIEW |
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