Being You Is Enough

The context is a little hazy, but I was about 11 or 12 when for some reason I told my schoolmates about my father being a photographer. It might have been one of those “this is what my daddy does” moments. Quite casually, I said that my father worked for Jet magazine.

“You lyin’,” was the response.

Even after viewing his byline underneath articles and photographs in the magazine, often the “Beauty of the Week,” I was told that I had merely chosen to fib about that person because we had the same last name.

But Harmon Griggs Perry was indeed both my father and at that time the Atlanta Bureau chief for Jet, an iconic publication that published news for Black America every week.

Like many other things, I didn’t discover the significance of his hard-won accomplishments until I was a grown up. I rarely spoke to him, after all. The occupation of Daddy Distant was just as mysterious to me as he was. But I do remember feeling quite hurt that I wasn’t believed and surprised that people thought such a thing would be worthy of a lie. It wasn’t as if I had said he was an astronaut or the president or some such.

My father was considered a pioneer in his field, especially in his native Atlanta where he plied his trade. He was the first black reporter hired by The Atlanta Journal in 1968. When I went to work for The Atlanta Journal and Constitution 20 years later, I encountered some of the same men who had worked with my father. They assumed that he had schooled me in the business. He did not, at least not directly. But you better believe that I understand the power of representation, even though I would not have used that term. Because I knew that such an occupation was available, I understood that it was available to me.

The mere reality of Perry doing what he did (and loved doing} was enough. He didn’t have to mentor me or teach me or take me to work on a special day. He was just his own authentic, imperfect self. All any of us have to do is be good at doing good and we have a whole population of casual mentors.