The Ungiven Gift

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

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

I would meander into his room to spend a little time with the rebellious loner and would often end up refereeing a screaming match between him and one of the nurses. The street-wise Curtis would 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 his upbringing, the sad reality of his current life and the apparent dimness of his future.

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

So, when my time was over with the last boy I was involved with, I asked the CAS if I could hook up with Curtis, albeit 'unofficially' this time. Problem was, I was in the process of selling my drycleaning business while building a music production studio (for my next career) and my time was too much at a premium to commit to a structured arrangement. They agreed, and I began to hang with Curtis.

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

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

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

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

He was a huge basketball fan. His hero of heroes was Isaiah Thomas, captain of the Motor City NBA Champs the prior two years. 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 I use the term