Real Love
What I lacked growing up, in Wilmington, Delaware,
were strong male figures that I could look up to. My
biological father was around off and on, briefly in the
early years of my childhood, but became completely
absent before I was ten. He died when I was in my
early twenties. In all those years, living in the same
city, we didn’t have any interaction. He never reached
out to me and I didn’t reach out to him. There was
no grieving on my part. Instead, I felt a lot of anger,
bitterness and had a mountain of unanswered
questions. But that’s not what this piece is about. I
want to honor and pay tribute to a man who in eight
short years filled what I yearned for. My uncle and
foster father, Walter Wilson Black was married to my
mother’s sister, Margaret, the woman who raised
20 | NKLC Magazine
Christine Pauls
me. He would become the only father I’d ever know
and the only man in my life that I hold the fondest of
memories.
My uncle had no biological children. The only child
born to Pearl Black in Mt.Pleasant, Delaware on July
29th, 1915, served in WWII. In civilian life, he was a
meat packer at Brown and Scott Meat Packing Plant
in Wilmington, Delaware. He suffered from mental
illness, having bouts of severe depression to fits
of rage, which I am told was an effect from his war
experience. Still, he was a father to me and three of
my older siblings, until he passed on August 21st,
1969, at the age of 54, from lung cancer.
One distinct memory I have was a time my uncle had