Though he was born in California, Reverend Roderick Bradley, was raised in Iowa and still lives in Des Moines, Iowa, where he pastors a church and publishes the Urban Experience, the only publication in the state of Iowa that focuses on the African American community of the state. I began by asking Reverend Bradley about what it means to be a father and the role that the father is expected to play in the family. “I’ve always desired to be a good father and I work hard at being a good father,” said Bradley. “As a Christian, I try my best to follow what the Bible describes as a father and one thing I learned is that a father you ought to love your wife and automatically that love pours down to the children. I love my wife and my family and do all that I can to please them and to make them happy. None of my children would say that I have not sacrificed for them as a father,” Bradley added. Unlike his own father, Reverend Bradley displays affection freely and does not hold back his emotions when it comes to his children and wife. This could be attributed to the difference between the period when Roderick Bradley was a boy and now when it is okay for men to be vocal about their love for their children. In the fifties and sixties when Rodrick Bradley was a young child growing up, men boys and men were taught, erroneously too, that being affectionate was not a “manly” thing to do. “I think the challenge with my father was that he was so disciplined and regimented. That he really didn’t really get a chance to show love. My father was not an emotional person. He wasn’t a huggy kind of person. We always raised under the impression that men don’t cry, (he chuckles) but that’s not true! For me to cry, it was a sign of weakness. So, I said, when I grow up, I was going to be different. For my father, that was how he was raised by his own father and so he passed it down,” Reverend Bradley recalled of his father. True to his childhood promise to himself, Reverend Bradley is an affectionate father who showers his family with love and is not afraid to lose his “manliness” by telling them he loves them, a departure from norms and traditions of the past that were steeped in the ideals of exaggerated masculinity. He is a different kind of father. One thing was for sure, as Bradley recalls, his father did love him and his siblings, but it was not the kind of love that was expressed with words. “He was a great provider but struggled in the area of being a father. We knew that he loved us, but he had a way of showing it. Some of his punishments would be considered today as cruel and inhuman. The bottom-line is that we knew he loved us. He was very disciplined and there are somethings that as I was growing up I said that I would not do, yet I knew he loved his family, protected and provided for his family. One thing that I remember about my father is that he was a man of his word; when he said what he meant and if he said he was going to something, he was going to do it whether good or bad.,” said Bradley. A trait that Bradley cherishes most form his father is discipline and integrity. Citing the Biblical injunction that says, “spare the rod and spoil the child,” the reverend believes that fathers should not be afraid to correct their children and set them straight. “Discipline is very key, and we have lost it today. There has to be tough love. You have to pour out into your children with hope that they grow up to be responsible men and women in society,” he added. Clair Rudison is a scholar, a management consultant, a preacher and a respected leader in the African American Community in Iowa. A Texas native, he grew up in an equestrian environment where horse riding was both an enjoyed pastime and a rite of passage for young boys. Rudision’s father played the role of teacher or coach for his son in more ways than one. “My father taught me a lot about masculinity,” said Rudison. “He taught me how to hunt, ride a horse and fish,” Rudison said. 35
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