BY: Vincent L. Hall
“From the Cotton Fields of Forney, Texas to celebrated Community Activist to the County Commissioner’s Court, he’s always been a fighter! This is a collection of convos and musings of my 40 years plus ride with the most controversial and historic figure in Dallas’ politics, John Wiley Price.”
My book is coming soon and I am glad. This has been a long 10-year journey and finally it’s about to come to fruition. Here is a teaser to get you interested before my April 15 release date.
“Our relationship came as a result of his misfortune.
As I was driving home from a funeral one day, I saw John stranded on the side of the road. You know it’s something about being a Black man standing near a “hot” red Ferrari that gets him noticed.
This would be my first real personal interaction with him and a foretelling of what I appreciate about him most. Metaphorically, this encounter said that he was the type of man who didn’t need much help. I later found that he had a penchant for helping others often. We became fast friends after that.
Neither of us could allow anyone to do more for us than we could do for them. Independence through generosity was something ingrained in us by our families.
Largesse and grace are qualities we shared, and we have amassed a 40-plus-year friendship trying to outdo each other. He is still the champ. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is as thoughtful as John Wiley Price.
On our way to his house, he proved that, and it assured me that he was the kind of role model I needed in my adult male life. As we drove along, I milked every bit of info I could from him. We talked about history, social updates, and politics. He spoke flowingly and eloquently.
When the brother told me that he was an expert at Robert’s Rules of Order, I was stunned. Folks at the PVL always told me how good he was, but he taught me the significance of knowing the rules and sticking to them.
My younger brother was the pastor of New Hope Baptist, a local “silk-stocking” Black church, and they were beating him to death with Robert’s Rules in business meetings. I took it all in.
We turned the corner going toward his humble, and I mean very humble, abode. That’s another story and another testament to who John is. We got within a block of where I thought he lived and spotted a truck from one of the local utilities.
The “meter man” turned off John’s water, or so I presumed, because he yelled at me to stop the car. He approached the technician and exchanged a few words and a few dollars.
I, gingerly, queried him on the transaction. John said very matter-of-factly that a single woman and four children lived in that house, and he could not stand for them to be without water. He didn’t know her name, but it was “obvious” that she struggled to make ends meet.
That one act of random kindness was all it took. I was even more impressed when I saw the single mother and realized that she was in no way in his sights as a date or a girlfriend. John couldn’t afford to pay her bills, and he couldn’t afford to see her and those children suffer.
The following Sunday, I attended his church. I heard the infamous Dr. Zan Wesley Holmes say that his message was meant to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
John Wiley Price never takes the comfortable route, and he is always on the side of the afflicted. For 40 years he has been a warrior on my side and so many others.
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