Level wrote on Thu, 10 June 2004 19:58 |
I will honor him with a toast to a great life of overcoming obsticles (both racially based and that of losing his sight)...
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I was reading somewhere that Ray never felt sorry for himself for being black or blind, because of his mom. She made him do house work with his siblings and treated him as if he was normal from day one. And their family made nothing of black-ness ... they were secure, they were Family.
Ray was thus confident, never in self-pity ... in that sense he never had to 'overcome' anything. Good parenting took care of that for him.
That's another gift he gave us ... to be who we are without Fear or Favor.
And Doug McClement was saying that Ray was the only one to not lip-sync on a small time Canadian comedy show. Brittney did, EVERYONE did ... but Ray was real, and he sang for his supper.