We started our two-day campus visit on Wednesday, February 17, with the dedication of “Boyd House” at College Avenue Hall, one of the residence halls organized around a theme, such as science or education. Students on the fourth floor of the dorm, whose themes are communications and political science, had voted the previous fall to name their floor in honor of Gerald, acknowledging a career and contributions “consistent with the educational aims” of their community. I said that Gerald would been delighted by the honor, especially given his early Mizzou years as Uganda X, campus hell-raiser.

After a lively dinner with students and faculty, I shared Gerald’s “Lessons on Empowerment” with students at a packed room in the Gaines-Oldham Black Culture Center. Zach writes about that event here. After the session, Dan Vietz, with whom Gerald joined forces in 1972 to wrest leadership of the student government from the incumbent campus Greeks, introduced himself and acknowledged that Gerald’s description of him in “My Times” as a shoeless, defiant and on an ego trip was tough but fair. “He was just as tough on himself,” Vietz conceded.

On Thursday morning, I guest-lectured to combined Cross-Cultural Journalism and Reporting classes, reading from Gerald’s chapter describing the Times staffs’ emotionally charged work on “How Race is Lived in America.”

I also discussed Gerald’s story with a general audience at the bright, airy new Reynolds Journalism Institute. Before the talk, the J-school’s visionary dean, Dean Mills, eagerly gave Zach and me a tour of the new building. Even Zachary, the computer whiz, was impressed with the school’s high-tech tools for budding journalists. We also announced the new Gerald M. Boyd Politics and Press Responsibility Endowment Fund, established from generous contributions to Mizzou in Gerald’s memory.

Zach and I headed back to St. Louis on Thursday evening to dine with the Joiner family: Gerald’s friends Robert and Diane, and their charming son and daughter. Bob and I discussed our upcoming dialogue and Zach schooled us on technology. Zach and I appreciated the Joiners’ warm welcome and Diane’s delicious meal of baked chicken, rice and broccoli.

Still tracing Gerald’s steps on Friday, Zach and I stopped by the Post-Dispatch, where Gerald worked for 10 years, from copy boy to White House correspondent. There I shared Gerald’s story with several staff members at a brown-bag lunch dialogue. Editor Arnie Robbins joined us as well. I’d never been in the P-D building before, but I could sense – perhaps the echo in the lobby or the weariness (maybe wariness?) on the faces of staffers – that the paper was a shadow of its former self. It was a preview of what I’d feel at the News / Free Press building on my trip to Detroit weeks later. Given the industry contraction, that sense is probably familiar across the country.

Friday evening, I had the honor of discussing “My Times” with Bob, a longtime St. Louis journalist who Gerald revered, at Left Bank Books downtown. Bob likened Gerald to Todd, the airman in Ralph Ellison’s folkloric short story “Flying Home,” in the sense that “it seemed the closer to the ground that he fell, the blacker he became.” The session was sponsored by Margie Freivogel’s stlouisbeacon.org, a local nonprofit online news source. Margie and her husband, Bill, contributed one of the compelling vignettes that open the chapters of “My Times.”

Zach and I ended our Missouri tour Saturday afternoon with a reading at the stately and vibrant Clayton home of Karen Kalish, an activist and leader whose business card bears the title “Serial Social Entrepreneur.” You can spot Karen’s house in by the bright red lips that greet you from the lawn. Karen’s co-host was Cheryl Polk, a Vice President at the local United Way, whom I had interviewed some 10 years ago for an Essence story on black philanthropy. Thanks to Yvonne Samuel, a fixture in St. Louis and media circles, who helped make the event a success.

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Guests at the book talk hosted by Yanick Rice Lamb in Bowie, Maryland.

The DC region was still reeling from its second major snowstorm in just days, but many intrepid souls trudged across the tundra to hear about Gerald and “My Times in Black and White.”

Phillip Dixon, chair of Howard University’s department of journalism in the John H. Johnson School of Communication, joined me on Friday, Feb. 12, for a candid, wide-ranging talk about Gerald’s life and legacy. Dixon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, described the particular challenges black male senior editors face in responding to racist attitudes among staff, among other topics. About 50 students came out – later I learned that attendance was mandatory for some classes (thanks profs!). Even so, several students bought books despite tight discretionary budgets. Come fall, perhaps a purchase of “My Times in Black and White” won’t be discretionary: Dixon declared that Gerald’s memoir will be required reading for all incoming freshmen.

Speaking of students, I was impressed by their questions, among them why completing Gerald’s book was so important to me. One young sister queried, “You asked contributors to the book to share their best Gerald Boyd stories; what’s your best Gerald Boyd story?” That made me smile and recount the time when Gerald asked me to move in with him and I said yes – once the lease on my apartment ran out. One day not long after that, called me at the end of a workday and told me to not go to my place but to come home to him. I went to his apartment to find that he had hired movers to pack up my tiny two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and move me across town to his! I must say that I was charmed.

Friday night found us at a wine and cheese reception and reading at Akwaaba in D.C., the elegantly appointed Dupont Circle-area bed and breakfast operated by my friend and former Essence colleague, Monique Greenwood. About 15 people—including Monique’s daughter Glynn Pogue, a Howard freshman—gathered in the parlor of Akwaaba for an intimate look at Gerald’s life and career. What we lacked in numbers, we more than made up for in the depth of discussion. Journalism veteran Jack White, advisor to Howard’s student paper, the Hilltop, acknowledged that Gerald’s story was sobering. Thanks to the Washington Association of Black Journalists and Lee Ivory, chapter president.

Saturday, Feb. 13, Yanick Rice Lamb, Editor in chief of Heart and Soul magazine and an associate journalism professor at Howard, hosted nearly 20 friends for a private reading at her home in Bowie, Maryland. It was good to see NABJ stalwarts like Barbranda Lumpkins Walls, Marcia Davis and Vanessa Williams. Some folks who joined us had been snowbound and were venturing out for the first time that week. So glad they dug out.

That evening, my final DC stop, we sold out of books as dozens of friends and even my brother-in-law Eric joined me at Busboys and Poets on 14th and V. It was great to see folks like Fred Sweets, who shares Gerald’s St. Louis roots, Jacki (another St. Louisan, who attended Soldan High with Gerald) and Larry Moffi, Marjorie Valbrun, Robert Pierre, and Ginger Thompson, who was just back from covering the aftermath of the quake in Haiti for The Times.

A special note of gratitude to my host, Yanick, a former Times and Times Magazine Group colleague, and the person whom I credit with my assuming a leadership role in NABJ. In addition to hosting the private reading, Yanick ferried me through horrendous traffic to my NewsChannel 8 interview in Alexandria, Va., and had a hand in all of the DC events and even some of the publicity (plus she gave me her master bedroom – who does that?). Thanks, Yanick, for your friendship and support.

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So many students that they ran out of chairs!

By Zachary Boyd

On Wednesday February 17,  at the Gaines Oldham Black Culture Center at the University of Missouri, my Mom, Robin D. Stone, talked and shared stories and times about my Dad, Gerald M. Boyd.

More than 100 Mizzou students (many from the School of Journalism– so many that they ran out of chairs!) packed the room to listen and learn about not only my Dad, who graduated from the university with a bachelor’s in journalism in 1973, but about lessons from his life and of success. One of those lessons was “Bring your whole self to the job,” which reflects the wisdom that Gerald often shared. That meant “be engaged, be proactive, give 120 percent,” she said.

On the other hand, she said “don’t leave your whole self on the job.” That meant to make sure to have a life outside of work. Make friends outside of your job, she said. Follow interests like music, sports, cooking, or other things you like to do. Don’t make work the center of your universe.

A reading from Robin and a few words from Zachary enriched and warmed the cold, but beautiful night. A few book sales and a signing followed that. And students left with some words of wisdom from Gerald Boyd.

After more than three years of mourning and tears and painstaking work, finally a time to laugh and give thanks and exhale.

On Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010, more than 100 people joined my hosts and dear friends Dana Canedy (a senior editor at the New York Times) and Patrik Henry Bass (senior editor at Essence) to salute Gerald’s “My Times in Black and White” at the beautiful new Dwyer Cultural Center in Harlem. (We’d said good-bye to Gerald in November 2006 at Harlem’s storied Schomburg Research Center, and I thought it fitting that we gather again in our adopted neighborhood to celebrate.) My heart was full, with a sense of accomplishment, but also with gratitude for so many of those who’ve supported Zach and me through our darkest hours.

The theme was one of family, because that’s a recurring theme throughout Gerald’s book. And I acknowledged folks in attendance from the many “families” in our lives: the Times, Essence (a former Health mag colleague chided me for not mentioning them), NABJ, Harlem Little League, Zach’s school, and friends and neighbors, and I shared how delighted Gerald would have been to see such a wonderful mix of families, and to see the kids (among them some of Zach’s friends from school and Dana’s 3-year-old son, Jordan) running around.
I also mentioned that yes, “My Times in Black and White” is a lot about journalism, and yes, it’s a lot about the New York Times (there’s even some juicy stuff), but the ultimate message in Gerald’s book is one of hope. And on that note I turned the mic to Zachary, who gave the reading. I’m told that several people cried as my 13-year-old spoke his Dad’s words. I couldn’t tell because I was trying hard to hold back the tears myself.

Among those in attendance were journalism luminaries from the national and local stage, including several current and former Times top editors, TV, radio and magazine journalists, visual and performing artists, and my neighbors Les Payne and Marie Brown. Another neighbor, Patricia Butts, wife of Abyssinian Baptist Church Pastor Calvin Butts and a force in her own right, took herself a front-row seat. Gerald’s spirit was there, I noted, adding that if he himself were present, he’d be whispering in my ear, asking where could he get a good, stiff Bombay martini – on the rocks with olives – instead of the evening’s offerings of red and white wine. It was a remarkable gathering, full of joy, and as Zach noted quite accurately, love.

Two days before, we kicked off the campaign with a provocative discussion at Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side. The audience was packed with friends, journalism scholars, courtesy of author and Baruch College professor Michel Marriott, and the curious. Jeff Coplon, who wrote the stellar no-he-did-not-mentor-Jayson-Blair article about Gerald for New York magazine in 2007, joined me on the dais and set the socio-historical stage for the discussion (“In 1968, the year Gerald turns 18 and settles on a career in newspapers … the Kerner Commission censures the nation’s newsrooms—then 99.7% white—as ’shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring, training, and promoting black journalists,’” Coplon read from his timeline), while I painted a multidimensional picture of Gerald (compassionate yet competitive, gentle yet fiercely protective of his people, humble yet proud; a race man who considered himself not a race man but a Timesman).

Coplon’s passion and objectivity showed in equal measure – he’d never met Gerald, but after months of interviewing people who shared good and not-so-flattering Gerald stories, he acknowledged that Gerald was someone he would like to have known. “Powerful,” “compelling” and “candid” were among the comments I heard from those in the audience.

When Gerald died more than three years ago, I vowed to complete his memoirs. At the time I had no idea what I was promising myself or friends who asked, “What will you do?” “What will happen to his work?” I was whipsawed and numb after spiraling from Gerald’s dismissal from the Times through his depression, through his illness to his death. And for months, I literally crawled back into bed each day after putting Zachary on the bus for school. There I stayed until 3 p.m., when I’d try to pull myself together so my child wouldn’t see that his mother was paralyzed with exhaustion and grief.

But one morning as I sobbed under the covers, I heard Gerald’s voice. It wasn’t gentle or soothing; it was loud, booming and bossy. “What the hell are you doing still in bed at 11:30?” he yelled. “Get up! Get going! You’ve got work to do!” Indeed I did. And I hope that he is pleased.