Reflections: Willie Brennon,civil rights struggle,toxic sites
Lawrence Aaron
Reflections: Lawrence Aaron’s last column
Sunday, August 3, 2008
By LAWRENCE AARON
RECORD COLUMNIST
I FIRST wrote about Willie Brennon two years ago. His weekly routine was to give free haircuts to shut-ins who couldn’t get to his Englewood barber shop.
Once I started probing, I discovered the role Brennon’s Barber Shop played in shaping the values of many young men in the 46 years he had been running it. Brennon died on July 24. |He was 72.
As a lad of 10, Aree Booker got his first paying job at Brennon’s. “I couldn’t cut hair, but I could sweep hair,” Booker told mourners during the funeral service Monday at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack.
Booker was not just another mourner. He was the funeral director managing the details: the horse-drawn carriage that paraded Brennon’s coffin through the streets of Englewood, the New Orleans-style send-off from musician Lonnie Youngblood’s crew, the barbers acting as Brennon’s pallbearers, the many flowers and the many friends.
Brennon was laid to rest by the 33-year-old funeral director who had first learned hard work and responsibility at the barber’s knee.
“It wasn’t only me. All the kids and adults got more than a haircut from Mr. Brennon,” said Booker, who owns Eternity Funeral Services in Englewood.
Preaching part of the funeral service, Mount Olive associate pastor Rae Brown had her son Andrew, 13, stand up. “Mr. Brennon used to tell my son, ‘Don’t give your mother or father a hard time.’ That was the voice that African-American moms and dads need in the ear of their boys,” Brown said.
His last few months
Retrieving my voice mail last weekend, I found Carol Brennon’s message telling me that her husband, Willie, had died Thursday night. When I called her back, she said they treasured my column paying him tribute on Father’s Day in 2006. Then she filled me in on the details of his leg fractured around Christmas and his downhill spiral with heart problems during his last few months.
“I can’t tell you how bad I feel,” she said, “I have just lost my best friend.”
His heart gave out. How ironic. Willie had the biggest heart, and understood intuitively when to use a kind word and when to be strict.
“People trusted Mr. B., not because he had all the answers, but because he had sense enough to listen,” Mount Olive’s pastor, the Rev. Gregory Jackson, said at the service.
Brennon and I clicked, I think, because we both valued listening. Last week, as I debated how to tell readers farewell in my final column today, Brennon came to mind as one of many people who enriched my own life, my thinking and my writing in the five years that I’ve been offering my views on The Record’s Op-Ed pages.
I never set out to change lives with this column or convince readers that only I know what’s right. My goal was simply to say what’s on my mind. You can rethink your assumptions if you want to.
Opining is infectious. And opining about New Jersey is such a guilty pleasure that I may start blogging.
I’ve received countless messages from readers and talked to hundreds of people I might not have known otherwise. I met lawyer Al Catalano and Ringwood residents Wayne Mann, Roger DeGroat and Larry Sheehan while attempting to figure out why the town’s beautiful Highlands environment had become an ecological disaster.
Litany of ailments
As I listened to Ringwood residents talk about their respiratory problems, cancer deaths, undiagnosed skin ailments and other mysterious maladies, Sheehan’s brother said, “You should meet Mickey. Mickey wants to die.” Mickey Van Dunk had undergone multiple surgeries all over his body to manage tumors attributed to hidradenitis suppurativa. He was a powerful symbol of the Ramapough Indians’ struggle.
Neither restoring the contaminated Ford Motor Co. dumping site to Superfund status nor heightened attention from state and federal agencies, elected officials, Ford and lawyers has resulted in major improvements in Upper Ringwood. Writing about this was the closest I’ve ever come to crusading for justice.
Finally, justice
I saw justice finally served, after 50 years, when Congress recognized the parents of Englewood’s Nate Briggs. They took their lives in their hands by signing a petition challenging South Carolina school officials over the volatile segregation issue.
I was pleased to open a dialogue about the social policies devastating families of incarcerated men and women. But I regret not ferreting out better explanations for Phylicia Moore’s parents after she died on a school trip to Ghana.
Those I celebrated included the Hong family, for rebuilding their looted business and donating new down coats from their Ridgefield warehouse to hundreds of poor kids; Shantay Mines, a former foster child making it through college; Carolyn Adams, with the battered but cherished Winged Victory award she got, along with a scholarship, from the NAACP; Paula Rogovin, who led war protests in Teaneck, and Dennis Castro, who was dedicated to his mission in Iraq; and Rutgers women’s basketball coach Vivian Stringer, for her personal strength.
Many readers shared the pain, joy and outrage of the people I wrote about. Others didn’t. Thank you, all, for reading my column.
Send comments about this column to letterstotheeditor@northjersey.com.
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I FIRST wrote about Willie Brennon two years ago. His weekly routine was to give free haircuts to shut-ins who couldn’t get to his Englewood barber shop.
Once I started probing, I discovered the role Brennon’s Barber Shop played in shaping the values of many young men in the 46 years he had been running it. Brennon died on July 24. |He was 72.
As a lad of 10, Aree Booker got his first paying job at Brennon’s. “I couldn’t cut hair, but I could sweep hair,” Booker told mourners during the funeral service Monday at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack.
Booker was not just another mourner. He was the funeral director managing the details: the horse-drawn carriage that paraded Brennon’s coffin through the streets of Englewood, the New Orleans-style send-off from musician Lonnie Youngblood’s crew, the barbers acting as Brennon’s pallbearers, the many flowers and the many friends.
Brennon was laid to rest by the 33-year-old funeral director who had first learned hard work and responsibility at the barber’s knee.
“It wasn’t only me. All the kids and adults got more than a haircut from Mr. Brennon,” said Booker, who owns Eternity Funeral Services in Englewood.
Preaching part of the funeral service, Mount Olive associate pastor Rae Brown had her son Andrew, 13, stand up. “Mr. Brennon used to tell my son, ‘Don’t give your mother or father a hard time.’ That was the voice that African-American moms and dads need in the ear of their boys,” Brown said.
His last few months
Retrieving my voice mail last weekend, I found Carol Brennon’s message telling me that her husband, Willie, had died Thursday night. When I called her back, she said they treasured my column paying him tribute on Father’s Day in 2006. Then she filled me in on the details of his leg fractured around Christmas and his downhill spiral with heart problems during his last few months.
“I can’t tell you how bad I feel,” she said, “I have just lost my best friend.”
His heart gave out. How ironic. Willie had the biggest heart, and understood intuitively when to use a kind word and when to be strict.
“People trusted Mr. B., not because he had all the answers, but because he had sense enough to listen,” Mount Olive’s pastor, the Rev. Gregory Jackson, said at the service.
Brennon and I clicked, I think, because we both valued listening. Last week, as I debated how to tell readers farewell in my final column today, Brennon came to mind as one of many people who enriched my own life, my thinking and my writing in the five years that I’ve been offering my views on The Record’s Op-Ed pages.
I never set out to change lives with this column or convince readers that only I know what’s right. My goal was simply to say what’s on my mind. You can rethink your assumptions if you want to.
Opining is infectious. And opining about New Jersey is such a guilty pleasure that I may start blogging.
I’ve received countless messages from readers and talked to hundreds of people I might not have known otherwise. I met lawyer Al Catalano and Ringwood residents Wayne Mann, Roger DeGroat and Larry Sheehan while attempting to figure out why the town’s beautiful Highlands environment had become an ecological disaster.
Litany of ailments
As I listened to Ringwood residents talk about their respiratory problems, cancer deaths, undiagnosed skin ailments and other mysterious maladies, Sheehan’s brother said, “You should meet Mickey. Mickey wants to die.” Mickey Van Dunk had undergone multiple surgeries all over his body to manage tumors attributed to hidradenitis suppurativa. He was a powerful symbol of the Ramapough Indians’ struggle.
Neither restoring the contaminated Ford Motor Co. dumping site to Superfund status nor heightened attention from state and federal agencies, elected officials, Ford and lawyers has resulted in major improvements in Upper Ringwood. Writing about this was the closest I’ve ever come to crusading for justice.
Finally, justice
Reflections: Lawrence Aaron’s last column Sunday, August 3, 2008 By LAWRENCE AARON
RECORD COLUMNIST
I FIRST wrote about Willie Brennon two years ago. His weekly routine was to give free haircuts to shut-ins who couldn’t get to his Englewood barber shop.
Once I started probing, I discovered the role Brennon’s Barber Shop played in shaping the values of many young men in the 46 years he had been running it. Brennon died on July 24. |He was 72.
As a lad of 10, Aree Booker got his first paying job at Brennon’s. “I couldn’t cut hair, but I could sweep hair,” Booker told mourners during the funeral service Monday at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack.
Booker was not just another mourner. He was the funeral director managing the details: the horse-drawn carriage that paraded Brennon’s coffin through the streets of Englewood, the New Orleans-style send-off from musician Lonnie Youngblood’s crew, the barbers acting as Brennon’s pallbearers, the many flowers and the many friends.
Brennon was laid to rest by the 33-year-old funeral director who had first learned hard work and responsibility at the barber’s knee.
“It wasn’t only me. All the kids and adults got more than a haircut from Mr. Brennon,” said Booker, who owns Eternity Funeral Services in Englewood.
Preaching part of the funeral service, Mount Olive associate pastor Rae Brown had her son Andrew, 13, stand up. “Mr. Brennon used to tell my son, ‘Don’t give your mother or father a hard time.’ That was the voice that African-American moms and dads need in the ear of their boys,” Brown said.
His last few months
Retrieving my voice mail last weekend, I found Carol Brennon’s message telling me that her husband, Willie, had died Thursday night. When I called her back, she said they treasured my column paying him tribute on Father’s Day in 2006. Then she filled me in on the details of his leg fractured around Christmas and his downhill spiral with heart problems during his last few months.
“I can’t tell you how bad I feel,” she said, “I have just lost my best friend.”
His heart gave out. How ironic. Willie had the biggest heart, and understood intuitively when to use a kind word and when to be strict.
“People trusted Mr. B., not because he had all the answers, but because he had sense enough to listen,” Mount Olive’s pastor, the Rev. Gregory Jackson, said at the service.
Brennon and I clicked, I think, because we both valued listening. Last week, as I debated how to tell readers farewell in my final column today, Brennon came to mind as one of many people who enriched my own life, my thinking and my writing in the five years that I’ve been offering my views on The Record’s Op-Ed pages.
I never set out to change lives with this column or convince readers that only I know what’s right. My goal was simply to say what’s on my mind. You can rethink your assumptions if you want to.
Opining is infectious. And opining about New Jersey is such a guilty pleasure that I may start blogging.
I’ve received countless messages from readers and talked to hundreds of people I might not have known otherwise. I met lawyer Al Catalano and Ringwood residents Wayne Mann, Roger DeGroat and Larry Sheehan while attempting to figure out why the town’s beautiful Highlands environment had become an ecological disaster.
Litany of ailments
As I listened to Ringwood residents talk about their respiratory problems, cancer deaths, undiagnosed skin ailments and other mysterious maladies, Sheehan’s brother said, “You should meet Mickey. Mickey wants to die.” Mickey Van Dunk had undergone multiple surgeries all over his body to manage tumors attributed to hidradenitis suppurativa. He was a powerful symbol of the Ramapough Indians’ struggle.
Neither restoring the contaminated Ford Motor Co. dumping site to Superfund status nor heightened attention from state and federal agencies, elected officials, Ford and lawyers has resulted in major improvements in Upper Ringwood. Writing about this was the closest I’ve ever come to crusading for justice.
Finally, justice
I saw justice finally served, after 50 years, when Congress recognized the parents of Englewood’s Nate Briggs. They took their lives in their hands by signing a petition challenging South Carolina school officials over the volatile segregation issue.
I was pleased to open a dialogue about the social policies devastating families of incarcerated men and women. But I regret not ferreting out better explanations for Phylicia Moore’s parents after she died on a school trip to Ghana.
Those I celebrated included the Hong family, for rebuilding their looted business and donating new down coats from their Ridgefield warehouse to hundreds of poor kids; Shantay Mines, a former foster child making it through college; Carolyn Adams, with the battered but cherished Winged Victory award she got, along with a scholarship, from the NAACP; Paula Rogovin, who led war protests in Teaneck, and Dennis Castro, who was dedicated to his mission in Iraq; and Rutgers women’s basketball coach Vivian Stringer, for her personal strength.
Many readers shared the pain, joy and outrage of the people I wrote about. Others didn’t. Thank you, all, for reading my column.
Send comments about this column to letterstotheeditor@northjersey.com.
Jay are discussing. 
Jay 7:15 am on January 14, 2009 Permalink |
Hey Kal
I see that you are the man to go to for a line up. I work long hours. Is your shop open 24/7. Hit me bac and let me kno Son
Kal Cauthen 5:10 pm on March 12, 2009 Permalink |
Yes Jay call 404-304-9553. I will take care of you Son.
Kal Cauthen