The Ungiven Gift

He was pencil thin and walked with a limp. A thirteen year-old boywith huge yearning eyes who was always an unlucky patient on thechildren's floor of the hospital where my youngest daughter was alltoo often incarcerated.

Curtis had sickle cell anemia, an incurable, painful and terminaldisease that plagues young people of African descent.

I would meander into his room to spend a little time with therebellious loner and would often end up refereeing a screamingmatch between him and one of the nurses. The street-wise Curtiswould usually win.

Over the course of a few years (the hospital was always my home-away-from-Home), I eventually learned of the horror of hisupbringing, the sad reality of his current life and the apparentdimness of his future.

My experience as a volunteer in the Big Brother-like program in ourlocal Children's Aid Society was that a small dose of interest andsome one-on-one attention could go a long way to helping a kidwho was in trouble with the law, failing school and in Curtis' case, asocial outcast.

So, when my time was over with the last boy I was involved with, Iasked the CAS if I could hook up with Curtis, albeit 'unofficially' thistime. Problem was, I was in the process of selling my drycleaningBusiness while building a music production studio (for my nextcareer) and my time was too much at a premium to commit to astructured arrangement. They agreed, and I began to hang withCurtis.

I learned in very short order that among his survival skills was thetendency to cajole, cleverly manipulate and even outright steal.Although always kind, I had to have a second set of eyes when inhis presence and was forced at times to be, well, curt with Curt.

Also during this time, I was involved in a major lawsuit after havinghad a song of mine "lifted" by a one-time friend and co-writingpartner in Los Angeles, who had become a 'hot' producer of majorrecording acts. On one of his multi-million selling records was thecore of a song of mine he had heard and we discussed in mypresence during one of my frequent music trips in the 1980's. I wasa little more than hurt and felt I deserved not only the royalties formy creation, but also the credibility that went along with a "cut" ofthat magnitude by a name recording artist.

I retained a highly regarded entertainment attorney in Detroit (herepresented many of the athletes on the professional sports teamsin Detroit as well as one of the all time greatest boxers and evensome famous civil rights icons) who just happened to also be atruly wonderful and giving human being.

It was in a meeting with this man that I casually mentioned Curtisand my desire to do something very special for him. See, in myheart, I had a feeling Curtis would not live for too many more years.Sickle cell sufferers often died in their early twenties, or evenbefore, a decade ago. I wasn't expecting anything from my lawyerin this regard, but the next day the phone rang and I was instructedto have Curtis "dressed up" and at the Palace of Auburn Hills at aspecific gate number one hour prior to a Detroit Pistons game laterthat week.

He was a huge basketball fan. His hero of heroes was IsaiahThomas, captain of the Motor City NBA Champs the prior twoyears. But I didn't let on to Curtis where we were going that night.Just that we were hanging out. I just asked his foster mother (and Iuse the term "mother" very lightly) to have him dressed nicely withhis birth certificate in hand by a certain time.

Curtis was on time, eagerly waiting on his rickety porch when Ipulled up. But to my utter dismay, he looked as disheveled as healways did in his overbaggy, tattered clothes. And of course, goodol' foster mom couldn't find his birth certificate. Now, can youimagine the fancy dancin' I had to do at U.S. Customs having this'gang looking' teenager with no identification trying to cross theborder in my new BMW? Well, fate and some silver tongued talkin'prevailed and we were soon r