This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 2, 2012 - Here’s what you see on day 34: A man and a boy kneeling in prayer, heads down, fingers laced, elbows resting on a yellow and blue blanket.
Words stretch out in the space behind them. “Dear God, I am committed to making a difference in my son’s life!”
What you see from the 34th painting of Cbabi Bayoc’s 365 Days with Dad are Tony Neal and his son, Anthony Neal II in a daily routine from years ago -- evening prayers.
Here’s what you don’t see: Charlie Sadberry, Oliver Sadberry and Edward Crenshaw.
But Tony Neal does.
“I see generations in that picture,” he says. “Although it’s two of us shown there on our knees praying, I see my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my father in that picture.”
Tony Neal, president and CEO of Educational Equity Consultants, has followed the career and work of Bayoc over the years. When he learned about Bayoc’s year-long project painting an image a day of black fatherhood, he signed up to buy paintings from three days.
Day 34, “We Pray Together,” comes from a photo taken 12 years ago by a photographer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In a story that ran on Father’s Day that year, Neal told of his life as a single father, the path he chose to make that job work, and why it mattered.
“I want to dispel the myth of the apathetic black male, the deadbeat dad and all the bad hype against black men," he said then. "There's so much negativity focused toward African-American men and parenting.”
Twelve years later, he sees Bayoc doing that with this project.
“He is sending a very strong counter-narrative to the narrative that is out there about fathers, especially African American fathers,” he says.
Twelve years later, Anthony Neal II is 23, in school at the University of Missouri St. Louis and the manager of a local restaurant.
“That seems like a long time ago,” he says.
Back then, his relationship with his dad seemed normal.
“Now, as an adult, I can look back on that and think, it’s a pretty unique thing,” he says.
The two spent a lot of time together, they were close, and now, Anthony Neal II says, he’s able to put together all that his dad taught him. You take the good lessons and the bad ones from your parents, he says, and it shapes you.
Thanks to that, he knows the kind of dad he’ll be when that time comes.
“You’ve gotta be the foundation,” Anthony Neal II says. “You’ve gotta be the central pillar. You’ve got to be strong enough for everyone else to lean on you.”
Here’s what you see on day 34: A man and a boy kneeling in prayer, heads down, fingers laced.
You don’t see grandfathers or great-grandfathers, or even the children who may follow. But they’re there.