A00444 - 2025 Jenkins Family Update

 Jenkins Family Update

2025

2025 was quite a year!  The year began with a New Year's dinner at my house in Fairfield on January 5.  The dinner guests included my sister Evelyn and her boyfriend Art; my ex-wife Monica; my brother Garry, his daughter Katrina, and his granddaughter Amara; my oldest daughter Camille along with her husband Jeremy and Jeremy's friend Ryan, my son Ryan and my youngest daughter Cristina.  It was a grand time with the standard two sets of tables. One for the older generation and one for the younger one.  It was great three generation dinner and I was extremely happy to be able to host it. 

For the Martin Luther King Day, I went over to Monica and Cristina's house on the other side of Fairfield where Monica and my son Ryan were present. Over a Marie Callendar's Chocolate Pie, I celebrated once again being Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, I am Free at Last!

Due to the lingering effects of my arthritis, I did not travel much during the months of February, March and April.  The most exciting events were attending miscellaneous medical appointments.  What fun!

The one notable except to my rather dreary existence during these three months was a dinner engagement with some of my Amherst College connections on March 29.  First, there was a dinner with Amina Merritt, Class of 1980; Jack Hailey, Class of 1967; and Matt Randolph, Class of 2016 at the Grand Lake Kitchen in Oakland.  Matt Randolph was a PhD student at Stanford who had authored an article entitled "Remembering Dunbar".  His article provided a wealth of information about previously unknown Dunbar graduates who later attended Amherst College.  I wanted to thank him in person for adding a great number of names to my Amherst College Black Alumni Memorial List.  

After dinner at the Grand Lake Kitchen, Amina, Jack and I left to attend a concert at the Meyhouse in Palo Alto. It was billed as "Allen Harris: Poetry of Jazz" but for us the main draw the accompaniment of Mr. Harris by our own Freddie Bryant, Amherst College, Class of 1987, Amherst College Copeland Fellow 2004, and Amherst College Honorary Degree 2013.  Freddie and I go back to 2017 when he graced the Memorial Service I conducted with his rendition of "Amazing Grace".  It was beautiful.

While Amina, Jack and I nibbled on a rather magnificent piece of fish, we were enthralled with the poetic words of Allen Harris accompanied by the mellifluous acoustic guitar of Freddie Bryant. After the concert, Amina, Jack and I met up with Freddie and his wife, Heather White.  Heather was originally in the Amherst College Class of 1980 but transferred to Harvard University where she pursued her studies in Mandarin and other Asian studies.  In 2017, when I first met her, she had recently finished directing a documentary about the working conditions in China.  The film is titled Complicit 

Episode 19: Heather White – The China Project

Complicit – Thought Maybe 

Complicit

Heather White 2017 1:29:50

Filmed over 3 years, Complicit is an undercover investigation into the lives and conditions of workers that assemble iPhones, tablets, and other electronics in factories such as Foxconn in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China. The film reveals the global economy’s factory floors, showing the conditions under which China’s youth have migrated by the millions in search of the espoused “better life” working for big corporations. But the reality is working long hours with toxic chemicals that cause many cumulative detrimental health conditions, including cancers. As such, a focal point of the story is Yi Yeting, who takes his fight against the global electronic industry from his hospital bed to the international stage. While battling his own work-induced leukemia, Yi Yeting teaches himself labour law in order to prepare a legal challenge against his former employers. As the struggle to defend the lives of millions of Chinese people from becoming terminally ill from work necessitates confrontation with some of the world’s largest corporations, including Apple and Samsung, Complicit turns to become a powerful portrait of courage and resistance against screens and rapacious corporate power in a toxic culture.

We five Amherst alums chatted for a bit and even took a group photo. It was indeed one of the more memorable evenings of the year.

My first major travel exercise occurred in May when I returned to Oklahoma for the first time in seventeen years.  The event was a family reunion in Boley, Oklahoma, in time for the Boley Black Cowboy Rodeo.   Boley is the historical black town in Oklahoma

Boley, Oklahoma - Wikipedia

Boley is my mother's hometown.  Over the years, I have been proud of the heritage that Boley provided even though the last time I saw Boley in 1987, there was not much to recommend it.  Fast forward some 38 years and I was surprised by the change.  In 1987, the houses and buildings appeared to be in a state of decline.  However, with influx of a new business (Smokaroma) and a new correctional facility (John Lilley Correctional Center), Boley has begun to experience a rebirth.  Only this time it is not as an all-black town, some whites have moved in and have integrated the community with new brick homes.  

As for the Rodeo itself.  It is my understanding that Boley was the originator of the Black Cowboy Rodeo and that, as of 2025, the tradition was 122 years old

Nation's oldest Black rodeo returns to Boley, Oklahoma

For me seeing the parade down the streets of Boley and then to see the actual rodeo events were moments of great pride.  Having grown up in the town of Victorville, California, which is known for Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys, and Dale Evans. Queen of the West, I have a long history of admiring cowboys and the cowboy ethos.  Seeing the Black Cowboys riding their horses down the main street of Boley was a fulfillment of dreams that began over sixty-five years ago when The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid were my heroes.

Since I was in Oklahoma, I felt obliged to visit the site of the 1995 Murrah Building Bombing.  I first went in 1997 when I returned to Oklahoma to attend my grandmother's funeral.  At the time, it was a somber place still showing signs of the scars left over from the bombing.  I went a second time in 2008 when I returned to Oklahoma to attend my aunt's funeral.  By then, chairs honoring each of the victims of the bombing had been erected and the nascent museum had begun showing the history of the bombing and its aftermath.  

This time when I visited the site, it was the 30th anniversary year of the bombing and the entire site had been transformed to remember and to partially understand the most horrific act of domestic terrorism to have occurred on American soil.  This time the building that once housed the Journal Record newspaper had been converted into the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum and it provided a profound and staggering record of that terrible day in 1995.

For me the most profound exhibit in the Museum was the recording of a board meeting that was occurring across the street from the Murrah Building at the blast.  To hear the shattering sound of the blast recording on the meeting recorder was stunning.  It was a somber time with much to remember.

The next week I was in Amherst, Massachusetts, attending my 50th Year Class Reunion.  It was good to see many of my classmates and to recreate the iconic photo on the rail outside the Octagon with my senior year roommates.  However, this Reunion was also significant because I performed my Memorial Service for the first time during a Class Reunion Weekend.