By the time my wife Bertha and I met in the 8th grade in Virginia, Robert Frost, the celebrated poet, had already written the Traveler. “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” Frost writes. I don’t recall hearing about Frost until after I left Lunenburg County, but somehow the adventurous spirit of the traveler in his poem found me.

I wasn’t certain what the future held for me when I graduated from high school, but I was certain that it wasn’t in sharecropping. Since I was four-years-old, the sunrise served as my alarm clock to begin working in the fields and that seemed like a sufficient time to devote to the soil of Virginia. It was the sixties and our country was going through a metamorphosis: the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Women’s Movement and my emancipation from the sharecropping life was due. Enlisting in the Navy was my first taste of adventure but even the Navy and its promise of voyages couldn’t hold me long.

After the Navy, Bert and I settled in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It has been our home for over 30 years and where we raised our three children. Not a progressive, up and coming place for African Americans at the time, hence there is no logic to why we felt this might be a suitable location to settle. But good ole Massachusetts’ has seen me change from and ironworker to a fireman, then to an entrepreneur and later a Baptist Preacher with out even as much as a blink.

I was accustomed to working outside, but not in the bitter cold and certainly not 90-feet in the air. But as an iron worker on the Mystic Tobin Bridge, we did just that. It was dangerous work and witnessing the death of two of my co-workers confirmed the risk we took daily. Their deaths affected me greatly; so much that I decided we needed a vacation.

Up until this point, a pick up truck with a cab on it served as our means of camping. Bert and I would take the kids fishing and camping in the truck all the while fantasizing about being in a GMC camper. Well, our days of dreaming were over. That Christmas season, we rented the GMC camper we treasured so much for three weeks. It was our first real vacation and our destination was the family vacation capital of the country, Disney World. As we traveled down the east coast, we stopped along the way to visit with family and friends. We camped at various campsites and finally at Disney. We were hooked. But we would have to wait until 1979 before we were able to purchase our first camper. It was a 21-foot used Transvan that took us from Boston to Quebec, to Maine and New Hampshire. We spent weekends and holidays traveling throughout New England and Canada for several years and even purchased a time share in Conway, New Hampshire near the Mountains to enhance our trips. But it was camping that we loved, so it was an easy and unanimous decision to sell the time-share to purchase a bigger camper.
In the summer of 1983, we traveled in our Vogue Motor Home across country making pit stops at our family reunion in New Jersey and at our class reunion in Virginia. The trip was not without mishaps. Our refrigerator broke down and waiting for a broken refrigerator part turned into purchasing a new Motor home that was leased the previous week to Charlton Heston while he made the movie “The Chief”. True RVers expect the unexpected and become experts at making mishaps not only part of the journey, but an enjoyable part of the journey. We continued West on the schedule plotted for us by Family Motor Coach and visited Oklahoma City, the Grand Canyon and California.

Our oldest child was about fourteen that summer and our cross country voyage seemed to come together at the right time. The kids still got excited about simple things like seeing the home of the legendary Jackson 5 in Indiana, running around the KAO campgrounds, standing on a mountain top in Salt Lake City, and being with their parents for weeks-on-end. In the back of my mind, I knew these days with the kids wouldn’t last and seeing the United States up close and personal for the first time with them was a surreal experience that I will never regret.

Putting 3 kids through college, being president of a booming cleaning business, and owner of a couple of Popeye’s Fried Chicken franchises, didn’t leave much time for recreation. We had been without an RV for several years, when my mother reminded me in 1994 that I promised to take her to visit her brother in New Jersey in a motor coach. I was ecstatic for the reminder and purchased our fifth RV, a 38 foot Beaver Patriot. We soon found ourselves at the RV super show on the Tampa Fairgrounds at the same time as Deloise and Louis Perry.

We rarely saw other African Americans while driving throughout the country in our RV in the late seventies and early eighties. So bumping in to the Perry’s, another African American couple, was like offering a child ice cream on a hot day. They told us about the National African-American RV’ers Association Inc., NAARVA, and we were astonished to find out about a whole group formed just for Black campers.

When drove throughout the country in our RV in the late seventies and early eighties, we rarely saw other African Americans. So bumping in to the Perry’s, another African American couple, was like offering a child ice cream on a hot day. They told us about the National African-American RV’ers Association Inc., NAARA, and were astonished to find out about a whole group formed just for Black campers.

The next summer, in 1996, we traveled to Hampton Virginia to the Baptist Ministers’ Conference and parked near NAARVA member, Rev. Walton Blake, who again urged us to join NAARVA. After this we were convinced to attend our first NAARVA Rally in Ohio. We’ve been faithful attendees of NAARVA rallies and active advocates of the organization since joining in 1996. Being around other African American RVers has been a tremendous experience complete with new found friends and supporters who share not only our interest in camping but share the pains and joys that fill our lives.

Immediately, surrounded by campers from everywhere imaginable at our first rally, I knew Bert and I would take an active role in the organization. I served as Chaplin for nine years and then 1st Vice President for three years. I am strongly considering a run for president of NAARVA this coming year and hope I can bring my enthusiasm for camping and Rving to the office and to another generation of African Americans.
When I try to explain my love for RV camping to skeptics I tell them about how grateful I am that God allows me to talk to people across the country. I tell them how grateful I am to meet people in my travels who need kind words of encouragement and have the ability to offer them one. I tell them about the cattle and horses we see, the hills and mountains, small towns and cities, sunrises and sunsets and God’s greatness from coast to coast. I tell them that this is my ministry, the road less traveled that I don’t regret being on; this is the life I love.