Captain [music] Ellis was right.
I served at the 78th from January of 1968 [music] through March of 1970, 26 months.
I held the hands of 83 soldiers who died in my care.
I wrote the number in a green notebook that [music] I still have in the top drawer of my bedroom dresser on Cotton Street.
83 names.
I wrote everyone.
>> [music] >> I came home in April of 1970 with a Bronze Star and a kind [music] of quiet that my mother recognized because she had seen it in my brother James.
I met Roosevelt Ray at the AME Zion Church [music] on Walthall Street in November of 1970, 7 months after I came home from Vietnam.
>> [music] >> Roosevelt was 24.
He was the first black man in Greenwood to hold a journeyman [music] electrician’s license issued by the state of Mississippi.
He had gotten the license in 1969 [music] after 4 years of apprenticeship under a white electrician in Grenada named Harold Putnam, [music] who had agreed to train him because, and Roosevelt told me this on our second date [music] over catfish at May’s Diner on Johnson Street, Harold Putnam had been in the Navy with Roosevelt’s Uncle Samuel >> [music] >> and had made a promise to Samuel in the engine room of the USS Midway in 1954 that if Samuel’s nephew ever wanted to learn [music] a trade, Harold would teach him.
Roosevelt kept that story his whole life.
He told it at every family dinner.
[music] He told it to Deondre and Marcus when they were boys.
The last time he told it was to Reverend Cleophus Johnson at the AME Zion the [music] Sunday before he died.
The story was about a promise kept across the color line.
Roosevelt believed, because Harold Putnam had believed, that a promise made in an engine room at sea was the same as a promise made in a church.
[music] You did not break it.
You did not qualify it.
And you certainly did not explain it away when the circumstances changed.
We were married on the 14th of June, 1971, [music] at the AME Zion on Wallfall Street by Reverend Otis Clements, who had baptized Roosevelt in 1949 in the same baptismal font.
We were married for 51 years.
We had two sons.
[music] Marcus Lamar Ray was born on the 12th of February, 1972.
[music] Deondre [snorts] James Ray was born on the 9th of August, 1976.
>> [music] >> Marcus was the one who left.
He went to Jackson State, then to a financial services firm in Memphis.
And by the time he was 30, he was wearing suits and driving a car that Roosevelt said cost more than our house.
>> [music] >> Marcus visited at Christmas.
He called on Sundays.
He was, by [music] every measure that Greenwood uses to measure a son, a success.
Deondre was the one [music] who stayed.
Deondre was an electrician.
He had gotten his license the same way Roosevelt had gotten his.
[music] Apprenticeship, patience, 4 years of crawling under houses in Leflore County pulling wire in the summer heat.
He married Charlene Hayes in 2000 [music] and had a son, Damon, in 2001.
Deondre died on the 14th of September, 2009.
[music] He was 33 years old.
He was riding his motorcycle on Highway 82 east of Greenwood at 6:40 in the evening when a [music] pickup truck driven by a man who had been drinking since 4:00 in the afternoon crossed the center line.
Roosevelt did not speak for 11 days after the funeral.
[music] On the 12th day, he went back to work.
He wired a house in Ittabena that afternoon.
He came home at 6:00.
>> [music] >> He sat on the front porch on Cotton Street with a glass of sweet tea, and he said to no one, [music] “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
” [music] He said it every evening for the rest of his life.
I never once heard him say [music] it without his voice breaking on the word blessed.
>> After Deondre died, Marcus [music] became the only son I had.
Let me tell you something about what [music] that does to a mother.
When you have two sons and one of them dies, the living [music] son becomes, well, he becomes the whole thing.
The phone call you wait for on Sunday, >> [music] >> the car in the driveway at Christmas, the voice that proves your family is still [music] a family.
Marcus knew that.
I want [music] to be fair to him.
Marcus was not a bad son in 2009.
[music] He drove down from Memphis for the funeral.
He stayed four days.
He helped Roosevelt with the insurance [music] paperwork.
He held my hand at the burial.
He called every Sunday for 6 months [music] after Deondre died, and the calls in the beginning were real.
The [music] kind of call where a son asks his mother how she is sleeping and waits for the answer.
The calls shortened over the years.
By 2015, [music] they were 5 minutes.
By 2018, they were 3.
By the time Roosevelt died [music] in August of 2022, Marcus was calling every other Sunday, and the calls were about logistics.
[music] When was the property tax due? Had I renewed the homeowner’s insurance? Did I need him to come down for anything? I told myself [music] that was just the way grown sons were.
That Marcus had a wife, Diane, and a job in Memphis, and [music] that a 3-minute phone call every other Sunday was what modern sons did.
I told myself [music] that for 3 years.
I was wrong.
Roosevelt died on the 20th [music] of August, 2022, on a Saturday morning in our bedroom on Cotton Street, with me holding his hand, and [music] Reverend Cleophus Johnson reading from the 23rd Psalm on the other side of the bed.
He was 76.
He had been diagnosed with congestive [music] heart failure in 2020.
The oxygen had been running for the last 8 months, and he had, in the way that Delta men of his generation handled dying, refused to go to the hospital, and insisted on staying in the house he had wired himself in 1973.
Roosevelt had been an electrician for 51 years.
He had wired every room in our house on Cotton Street, the AME Zion Fellowship Hall in 1984, May’s Diner when May’s daughter took it over in 2001.
When he was on oxygen, sitting in his chair on the front porch in the evenings, he would point at the houses across the street and tell me which ones he had wired, and in what year, and which one still had the original panels [music] he had installed.
After Roosevelt died, I received two things I had not known about.
[music] The first was a VA survivor pension.
Roosevelt had served 2 years in the Army, 1964 to ’66, before Vietnam escalated.
>> [music] >> The pension paid $4,200 a month.
Marcus had helped me apply for it in September [music] of 2022, 3 weeks after the funeral.
The second thing was the house on Cotton Street, free and clear, worth $162,000 [music] on the Leflore County tax assessment.
Those two things are what this story is about.
In January of 2023, [music] 5 months after Roosevelt died, Marcus called [music] me on a Sunday, a real Sunday, not an every other.
And told me that the VA pension payments [music] needed to be restructured for tax efficiency.
I said, “Marcus, >> [music] >> what does that mean?” He said, “Mama, it means we set up a small company, [music] an LLC, in your name, and the pension payments go through the LLC instead of [music] straight to your bank account.
It reduces your tax exposure.
” I said, “Marcus, I have been paying taxes on a nurse’s salary [music] for 38 years.
I know what tax exposure is.
” He said, >> [music] >> “Mama, I’m a financial advisor.
Let me help you.
” I let him help [music] me.
He drove down from Memphis with paperwork.
The paperwork created an entity [music] called Ray Family Holdings LLC.
Marcus was listed as the managing member.
I was listed as the sole beneficiary.
[music] The pension payments would be deposited into the LLC’s account at a bank in Memphis, >> [music] >> not at my bank in Greenwood, at the Planters Bank on Main Street, where Roosevelt and I had banked for 49 years.
And Marcus [music] would transfer the monthly payment to me after administrative processing.
I signed the papers at my kitchen [music] table.
I did not call a lawyer, did not call Reverend Cleophus, [music] did not call anyone, because the man sitting across from me at my kitchen table was my [music] only living son, and he had brought me a pecan pie from a bakery [music] in Memphis, and the pecan pie was still warm.
For the next [music] 22 months, Marcus deposited my VA pension into Ray Family Holdings LLC.
[music] For the first 4 months, he transferred the full amount to my account at Planters Bank.
After that, the transfers got [music] smaller.
I want to be precise about the money, because the money matters.
[music] My VA survivor pension was $4,200 a month.
[music] In the first 4 months, January through April of 2023, >> [music] >> Marcus transferred the full 4200 to my Planters Bank account.
I had no reason to suspect [music] anything.
In May of 2023, the transfer was 3800.
Marcus told me the LLC had [music] administrative fees that month.
In June, 3600, [music] processing delay.
By October of 2023, the monthly transfer had dropped to 2800.
[music] I called Marcus.
He told me the VA had adjusted the benefit downward because of a new federal regulation.
[music] I did not verify that.
I should have verified that.
I am a retired head nurse who managed a department budget of $200,000 a year at Greenwood Leflore Hospital for 11 years, and I did not call the VA to verify what my own son told me about my own pension.
Let me tell you why.
Because he was the only one left.
Because Deondre [music] was dead.
Because Roosevelt was dead.
Because the phone call on Sunday, even when it was 3 minutes of logistics, was the only phone call I got from [music] anyone who shared my blood.
By October of 2024, the monthly [music] transfer had dropped to 1900.
In 22 months, Marcus had deposited a total of $92,400 [music] into Ray Family Holdings LLC.
He had transferred [music] $50,600 to me.
The difference, $41,800, was gone.
I did [music] not know where.
I did not know because I had not looked, and I had not looked because looking meant my son [music] was stealing from me.
And if my son was stealing from me, then the last piece of my family was broken.
[music] There was something else.
In July of 2024, Marcus brought a second set of papers to my kitchen table.
[music] These papers were not about the pension.
These papers were about the house.
He said, “Mama, the house is getting old.
[music] The roof needs work.
The wiring” and he paused here because we [music] both knew that Roosevelt had wired this house.
“The wiring needs updating.
A reverse mortgage would let you pull equity [music] out of the house to pay for repairs and you wouldn’t have to make payments.
The bank gets the house when you pass.
” I said, >> [music] >> “Marcus, the bank gets the house.
” He said, “Mama, you’re 77.
The house is worth [music] 160,000.
You could pull out 80, maybe 90,000.
Fix the roof, update the kitchen and still live here for the rest of your life.
” I said, [music] “Marcus, your father wired this house.
” He said, “Mama, I know, but the wiring is 50-years old.
” [music] I did not sign the reverse mortgage papers.
I told him I would think about it.
What I did not know, [music] what Damon would show me 3 months later, was that Marcus had already filed a pre-application for the reverse mortgage with [music] a lender in Memphis.
The pre-application had my signature on it.
I had [music] not signed it.
The signature was close.
It was not perfect.
The E in Eunice leaned too [music] far to the right, the way a person leans it when they are copying from a model rather than writing from muscle memory, but it was close enough to fool a lender [music] who had never met me.
Now, let me tell you about what Damon found.
On his second day in Greenwood, the Thursday [music] after he arrived, Damon asked me over breakfast whether he could see the house.
He wanted to see the room where his father had [music] slept as a boy, the porch where Roosevelt had sat in the evenings, the kitchen where Pearline Townsend, his great-grandmother, [music] had stored the palmetto cross above the door.
I showed him everything.
[music] While I was in the bedroom getting a photo album, a green album with pictures of Deondre as a boy that I had not [music] opened in 15 years, Damon was in the living room.
On the coffee table, where I had left them the week [music] before, were three envelopes from Ray Family Holdings LLC, each [music] containing a monthly statement.
Damon is 24 years old.
He works in financial compliance at a fintech [music] company in Atlanta.
His job, five days a week, is to review transaction records and flag irregularities.
>> [music] >> He told me later that it took him about 90 seconds.
The statements showed deposits from the VA.
They showed transfers to my account at Planters Bank.
>> [music] >> The deposits were 4,200 a month.
The transfers were 1,900.
Damon did not say anything that [music] morning.
He ate his eggs.
He looked at the photo album.
He asked me about Deondre’s motorcycle, and I told him, because I have never lied to anyone about my son, >> [music] >> that Deondre had loved that motorcycle the way Roosevelt had loved his first set of Klein pliers.
That night, after I had gone to bed, Damon sat on the front porch with his laptop and pulled the LLC’s public filing from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website.
>> [music] >> The managing member was Marcus Lamar Ray.
The registered agent was Marcus Lamar Ray.
The mailing address was Marcus’s house in Memphis.
>> On Friday morning, his third day in Greenwood, Damon asked me to sit with him on the front porch.
He had his [music] laptop open.
A yellow legal pad sat beside it.
The three LLC statements [music] from the coffee table, which he had photographed with his phone the day before and returned to the same position, >> [music] >> were fanned out on the railing.
He said, “Mrs.
Ray.
” I said, “Damon, >> [music] >> you can call me Grandma, or you can call me Mrs.
Ray, but you should decide because you have been going back and forth for two days, and it is making me nervous.
” He smiled.
>> [music] >> It was his father’s smile.
The left side went up before the right.
He said, “Grandma, >> [music] >> I need to show you something.
” He showed me.
He walked me through the LLC statements [music] month by month from January 2023 through September 2024.
First, the deposits from the VA, >> [music] >> 4200 every month without variation.
Then, the transfers to [music] Planters Bank, which had started at 4200 and declined month by month to 1900.
Then, the difference, [music] $41,800 that had gone into Ray Family Holdings LLC >> [music] >> and had not come out the other side.
He showed me the reverse mortgage pre-application, which [music] he had found on the lender’s public portal using the LLC’s taxpayer ID number, and which bore a signature that looked like [music] mine, but was not mine.
I sat on the porch for a long time.
I looked at the houses across the street, the houses Roosevelt had wired one [music] by one over 51 years.
I said, “Damon, [music] call Reverend Cleophus.
” Reverend Cleophus Johnson has been the pastor of AME Zion on Wolfhall Street [music] since 1992.
He baptized both of my sons.
He buried Deondre.
[music] He buried Roosevelt.
He has eaten Sunday dinner at my kitchen table more [music] times than I can count, and he has never once arrived without a jar of his wife [music] Dorothy’s fig preserves because Dorothy believes in the way that church wives in Greenwood believe >> [music] >> that no visit to a widow’s house is complete with something sweet in a jar.
Reverend [music] Cleophus came to my house on Friday afternoon at 4:00.
Damon showed him what he had shown me.
Reverend [music] Cleophus sat with the laptop and the legal pad for 20 minutes without speaking, which is a long time [music] for a man who has not been silent for 20 consecutive minutes since 1958.
When he finished, [music] he took off his reading glasses.
He folded them.
He put them in the breast pocket of his shirt.
[music] He said, “Eunice, I want you to call Tomorrow Wells.
” I said, “Who is Tomorrow Wells?” >> [music] >> He said, “Tomorrow Wells is an elder law attorney in Jackson.
She handled the Bishop case in Yazoo County [music] last year.
A son who had been diverting her mother’s social security for 4 years.
She recovered every dollar.
She is a member of New Hope AME in Jackson.
>> [music] >> I trust her.
And I trust her, Eunice, because she is a black woman in Mississippi who has [music] spent 15 years protecting black mothers from their own children, and she does not lose.
” I said, “Reverend, call her.
” He called her from my front [music] porch at 4:22 on a Friday afternoon in October with the sun going down over the Delta >> [music] >> and the pecan tree in my front yard dropping its leaves the way it drops them every October one at a time without hurry.
Tomorrow Wells [music] drove from Jackson on Monday morning.
She was at my kitchen table by 10:00.
She was 46 years old wearing [music] a gray blazer over a white blouse and carrying a leather bag that looked like it had been through more courtrooms [music] than most judges.
She drank black coffee.
She did not eat the pound cake.
>> [music] >> She read everything Damon had compiled over the weekend, the LLC filings, the bank statements he had requested from Planters Bank using my authorization, the reverse mortgage pre-application, and the [music] timeline of Marcus’s visits and phone calls for the past 22 months that Damon had reconstructed from my phone records.
At noon, she put her pen down.
>> [music] >> She said, “Mrs.
Ray, I am going to tell you three things.
[music] All right? First, your son has diverted $41,800 of your VA survivor pension through a [music] shell LLC over 22 months.
That is financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult under Mississippi code section 43 47 19.
Second, >> [music] >> the reverse mortgage pre-application bearing your forged signature is a separate felony, uttering a forged instrument under section 97 21 [music] 59.
Third, your grandson, she looked at Damon [music] who was sitting at the end of the table with his legal pad, has done a better job of documenting this case than most forensic accountants I have hired.
[music] The evidence is clean.
It is time-stamped.
It is verifiable.
If you want to pursue this, Mrs.
Ray, we will win.
The question [music] is not whether, the question is how.
I said, “How?” She said, “Criminal or civil or both.
That is your decision.
[music] I want to tell you what I was thinking when Tamara Wells said the words criminal or civil.
” >> [music] >> I was thinking about Kuchi.
I was thinking about a boy from Biloxi, Mississippi named [music] Private First Class Raymond Tate who had been brought into the 78th Surgical [music] on the 14th of March, 1969 with shrapnel in both legs and a wound in his left side that I could see from across the room [music] was not survivable.
He was 19 years old.
He had a photograph of his mother in his breast pocket.
[music] I held his hand for 47 minutes while the surgeons worked and then stopped working and then stepped [music] back from the table.
I wrote his name in the green notebook that night, number 31.
I was thinking [music] about Raymond Tate because Raymond Tate had been brought in by his own squad member, [music] a corporal who had thrown a grenade into a tunnel without clearing the area and who [music] had been standing unhurt in the corridor of the 78th while Raymond Tate bled out 11 feet away.
The army had court-martialed the corporal.
>> [music] >> They had sent him to Leavenworth for 18 months.
Raymond Tate’s mother had received a flag and a letter.
>> [music] >> Justice had been done.
And Raymond Tate’s mother, whose name was Ida Tate of Biloxi, Mississippi, had written me a letter [music] in 1971 after I came home, thanking me for holding her son’s hand.
In the letter, she said one sentence I have never forgotten.
She said, [music] “The court gave me justice, but justice did not give me back my son.
” I was thinking about Ida Tate [music] when Tamera Wells asked me whether I wanted criminal or civil.
I said, “Tamera, tell me what criminal means.
” >> [music] >> She said, “Criminal means I refer the case to the Leflore County District Attorney.
Marcus is arrested.
He is charged with financial exploitation [music] and forgery.
If convicted, and with this evidence, he would be convicted, the sentencing range is 5 to 7 years.
He would serve with good behavior [music] approximately three.
And civil? Civil means I file a lawsuit.
[music] We recover the $41,800 plus interest.
We void the reverse mortgage pre-application.
We dissolve Ray Family Holdings LLC.
[music] We establish a protective order barring Marcus from any further financial contact with you.
He pays, >> [music] >> he loses access, but he does not go to prison.
” I looked at Damon.
Damon was looking at the table.
I said, “Damon, Marcus is your uncle.
” >> [music] >> He said, “Yes, ma’am.
” “Your father’s brother.
” “Yes, ma’am.
” I said, “Your father loved your uncle.
They used to ride bicycles on Cotton Street when they were boys.
Your father had a blue Schwinn that Roosevelt bought at a yard sale in Itta Bena for $12.
And Marcus had a red one that was too big for him.
And they rode them up and down this street every afternoon after school until the street lights came on.
” Damon did not say anything.
>> [music] >> I said, “Tamara, I want the civil option.
I want every dollar back.
I want the reverse mortgage voided.
I want the LLC dissolved.
[music] I want Marcus to know that I know, and I want him to know that my grandson is the one who found it.
” I paused.
“But I will not send my son to prison.
Deondre is dead.
>> [music] >> Roosevelt is dead.
Marcus is the last child I have.
The cost of his prison would be paid by his brother’s memory.
” >> [music] >> Tamara Wells looked at me for a long moment.
She said, “Mrs.
Ray, [music] I have represented 41 clients in cases like yours.
You are the seventh who has chosen civil over criminal.
I [music] respect that choice.
I will tell you what I tell every client who makes it.
” Tell me.
>> [music] >> “The civil path works.
It recovers the money.
It stops the behavior, but it does not punish.
Marcus will pay you back over 5 years.
>> [music] >> He will lose access to your finances permanently.
He will sign a written admission, >> [music] >> but he will not spend a single night in a cell.
If that is something you can live with, and [music] I am not asking you to decide that today, then we proceed.
” I said, “Tamara, I held 83 soldiers’ hands in Vietnam.
19 [music] of them were boys who had been hurt by their own side.
Friendly fire, bad orders, a corporal who threw a grenade without clearing the tunnel.
[music] I learned something in those 26 months that I have carried for 56 years.
” What is that? “Destroying a man does not repair what he broke.
It just [music] makes two broken things instead of one.
” Tamara wrote something on her legal pad.
She looked at Damon.
She looked at Reverend Cleophus, who had been sitting by the window the whole time with his hands folded.
[music] She said, “All right, Mrs.
Ray.
We proceed civilly.
I will need 3 weeks to prepare the filing.
In those 3 weeks, I need you to do one thing.
What is [music] that? Do not tell Marcus that Damon is here.
Do not change your routine.
Continue to accept whatever transfer he sends.
Let him believe everything is the same.
” >> [music] >> I said, “Tamara, I have been letting my son believe everything is the same for 22 [music] months.
” She said, “Then three more weeks should not be difficult.
” >> In the three weeks between Tamara’s visit and the filing, [music] Damon stayed in Greenwood.
He slept in Deondre’s old room.
The room had not been changed since 2009.
[music] Deondre’s high school football jersey was still on the closet door.
His electrician’s belt, the one Roosevelt had given him when he passed his journeyman exam, [music] was still hanging on the hook by the window.
His motorcycle helmet was on the top shelf of the closet where Charlene had put it the week [music] after the funeral and where no one had touched it since.
Damon did not move anything.
>> [music] >> He slept in his father’s bed, under his father’s quilt, with his father’s [music] football jersey on the closet door.
And in the mornings, he came to the kitchen and ate eggs and toast and drank coffee [music] and helped me water the tomato plants in the backyard that Roosevelt had started in 1997 [music] and that I had kept alive for 29 years because letting them die felt like letting one more piece of him go.
[music] In the evenings, we sat on the front porch.
I told him about Roosevelt, about the Klein pliers, about [music] Harold Putnam and the engine room of the USS Midway, about the electrician’s license [music] and the first house Roosevelt had wired in Greenwood, a house on Grand Boulevard that had belonged to a white family named [music] Patterson who had hired Roosevelt in 1969 because Harold Putnam had vouched for him.
I told him about Deondre, [music] about the motorcycle, about the blue Schwinn bicycle.
I told him about Vietnam, about [music] the 78th Surgical, about Captain Ellis, about Raymond Tate, about [music] the green notebook with 83 names.
Damon listened.
He is a boy who knows how to listen.
That is the thing I am most grateful for.
Marcus called on Sunday of the second week.
>> [music] >> The call was 2 minutes and 40 seconds.
He asked about my knee.
He asked about the insurance.
He told me Diane was remodeling their kitchen in Memphis and [music] the contractor was behind schedule.
He did not ask if anyone had been visiting.
Doris Williamson, who is 79 >> [music] >> and who has lived next door to me on Cotton Street since 1984, had noticed Damon’s rental car in my driveway on the second day.
Doris did not say anything to me about it for a week.
And then, on the following Wednesday, she brought over a casserole dish of collard greens [music] and cornbread and said, standing at my kitchen door, “Eunice, >> [music] >> that boy on your porch has Deondre’s jaw.
” I said, “Doris, that is Deondre’s son.
” She said, “I [music] know who he is.
I’m asking you if he’s here for a good reason or a bad one.
” I said, “Doris, he is here for a good reason.
” She looked [music] at me for a long moment.
Doris has been my neighbor for 40 years.
She was Roosevelt’s neighbor.
>> [music] >> Her husband Walter had served with my brother James Jr.
in Korea.
And Walter had died in 2011 from the same silence that James had carried home.
Doris had watched me bury Deondre and Roosevelt.
>> [music] >> She had brought me collard greens every Wednesday since August of 2022.
She said, “Eunice, if you need anything, my door is open day or night.
” [music] I said, “I know, Doris.
” She did not ask anything else.
She [music] went home.
She left the porch light on.
On the 4th of November, 2024, [music] Tamara Wells filed a civil complaint in Leflore County Chancery Court.
The complaint named [music] Marcus Lamar Ray as defendant.
It alleged financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult under [music] Mississippi Code Section 43-47-19, forgery under Section 97-21-59, civil [music] damages only, no criminal referral, and breach of fiduciary duty as managing member of Ray Family Holdings LLC.
[music] The complaint was accompanied by 96 pages of supporting documentation that Damon had compiled, notarized, and indexed in a binder with tabs.
Marcus was [music] served at his home in Memphis on the 5th of November.
He called me at 7:14 that evening.
He said, “Mama, >> [music] >> what is this?” I said, “Marcus, you know what it is.
” “Mama, who who told you? [music] Who is behind this?” I said, “Marcus, your nephew Damon is sitting in your brother’s room in Greenwood right now.
He has [music] been here for 3 weeks.
He found the LLC statements on my coffee table on his second day.
” The line was quiet for a long [music] time.
He said, “Mama, it was a loan.
The money was a loan.
I was going to put it back.
” I said, [music] “Marcus, you forged my signature on a reverse mortgage application.
” He did not answer.
>> [music] >> I said, “Marcus, I love you.
You are my son.
You are the only child I have [music] left.
I am not sending you to prison, but you are going to pay back every dollar.
And you are not going to call this house, or come to this house, or contact me in any way >> [music] >> for 24 months.
That is what Tamara’s letter says.
You will hear from her tomorrow.
” [music] He said, “Mama.
” I said, “Goodbye, Marcus.
” I hung up the phone.
Marcus retained a lawyer in Memphis.
The lawyer’s name was Vernon Cross.
[music] Vernon Cross called Tamara Wells on the 7th of November and requested [music] a settlement conference.
Tamara agreed.
The conference was held by telephone on the 14th of November.
Vernon Cross proposed full restitution of the 41,800 over 60 months, 5 years, [music] at zero interest, plus dissolution of Ray Family Holdings LLC, plus voiding of the reverse mortgage pre-application.
Tamara counter-proposed restitution in 48 months, not [music] 60, at 6% interest, a written admission signed by Marcus, a no contact order of 24 months, [music] and Marcus’s name removed from all of my financial accounts, my property deed, my insurance [music] policies, and any power of attorney documents, current or future.
Vernon Cross accepted on the 16th of November.
[music] Marcus signed the settlement agreement on the 20th.
I did not attend the conference.
>> [music] >> I did not need to.
Tamara had handled it the way she had handled the Bishop case in Yazoo County, and the way she had handled, she told me later, 40 other cases across the Mississippi Delta.
>> [music] >> She called me on the evening of the 20th and said, “Mrs.
Ray, it is done.
The LLC is dissolved.
The [music] reverse mortgage is voided.
Your pension payments will resume full deposit into your Planters Bank account as of December 1st.
Marcus has signed the admission and the no contact [music] agreement.
” I said, “Tamara, thank you.
” She said, “Mrs.
Ray, thank your grandson.
” >> [music] >> Damon went back to Atlanta on the 23rd of November, the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
[music] He had been in Greenwood for 5 weeks.
5 weeks of sleeping in his father’s bed [music] every night, eating breakfast at my kitchen table every morning, watering the tomato plants, [music] fixing the screen door on the back porch that had been sticking since 2019, going to service [music] at A.
M.
E.
Zion on Walthall Street.
Reverend Cleophus had introduced him to the congregation as Deondre’s boy come home.
On the morning he left, we [music] stood in the driveway.
He said, “Grandma, I’m coming back for Christmas.
” >> [music] >> I said, “Damon, you do not have to.
” He said, “I know.
I want to.
” He put his arms around me.
He is [music] 6 ft tall.
I am 5 ft 4.
The top of my head came to his collarbone.
[music] I did not cry.
I have not cried in public since 1970 when Captain Ellis told me that Raymond Tate’s mother [music] had written to the 78th asking for the name of the nurse who had held her son’s hand.
>> [music] >> I came close in my driveway on the 20th of November >> [music] >> with Deondre’s son holding me the way Deondre used to hold me before he left for a job in Itta Bena.
But I did [music] not cry.
I went inside.
I sat in Roosevelt’s chair on the front porch.
[music] I drank a glass of sweet tea.
Doris’s porch light was on.
It is December now.
Marcus has not called.
The no contact [music] order is in effect.
I do not know what he is doing in Memphis, whether Diane is still with him, >> [music] >> whether he sleeps.
I am his mother.
I think about him.
Damon came back for Christmas [music] the way he said he would.
He drove from Atlanta on the 22nd.
>> [music] >> He brought his girlfriend, a young woman from Decatur named Alicia who teaches third grade and who helped me make sweet potato pie on Christmas Eve using my mother Pearline’s recipe, >> [music] >> which I had not made with another woman in the kitchen since Roosevelt’s sister Louise died in 2017.
[music] On Christmas morning, Damon and I sat on the front porch.
It was 58°, [music] which is what December in the Delta feels like, warm enough for a sweater, not warm enough for just a shirt.
He was drinking coffee.
I was drinking [music] sweet tea.
He said, “Grandma, I’ve been thinking about something.
” “What is that? He said, [music] I want to come down here more, not just Christmas.
I want to I don’t know yet what I want, but I know I want to be here.
I want to know the houses Granddad wired.
I want to know the [music] church.
I want to know the people my daddy knew.
I looked at him.
I said, Damon, your father would have wanted that.
He said, I know.
[music] I said, your grandfather would have wanted it more.
He did not answer.
[music] He drank his coffee.
He looked across the street at the houses Roosevelt had wired.
I want to tell you something.
I held my husband’s hand for 51 years.
I held dying soldiers’ hands in 1969.
I held my son Deondre’s motorcycle helmet in 2009.
>> [music] >> The one from the top shelf of the closet.
And I pressed my face into it and breathed in the last of him.
The hardest thing I ever held was the phone on the night [music] I told Marcus goodbye.
Not because I was angry.
Because I was not angry.
[music] I was something worse than angry.
I was done.
And being [music] done with your own child, the last one, the only one, >> [music] >> the one who used to ride a red bicycle on Cotton Street, is the loneliest thing a [music] mother can be.
I chose not to send Marcus to prison.
I want you to understand [music] why.
It was not forgiveness, not weakness, [music] not a mother making excuses for a son who stole from her.
>> [music] >> It was a decision.
A decision made by a woman [music] who had spent 26 months in a surgical hospital watching what happens when you destroy [music] a man to balance a ledger.
Raymond Tate’s mother got [music] justice.
She did not get her son back.
Ida Tate died in 1987 [music] in Biloxi, Mississippi, alone with a folded flag >> [music] >> and a letter from a nurse in Greenwood she had never met.
I [music] did not want to be Ida Tate.
I wanted my money back.
>> [music] >> I got it.
I wanted the reverse mortgage stopped.
It was stopped.
[music] I wanted Marcus to know that his brother’s son, the boy he had never visited in Atlanta, >> [music] >> the grandson he had never mentioned on a Sunday phone call, was the one who found the truth.
[music] Marcus knows.
That is enough.
I [music] am 78 years old.
I live on Cotton Street in Greenwood, Mississippi [music] in a house my husband wired in 1973.
The VA pension comes into my Planters Bank account on the first [music] of every month, the full 4200, the way it was supposed to come from the beginning.
[music] Reverend Cleophus still brings fig preserves on Sundays.
Doris still brings [music] collard greens on Wednesdays.
Damon calls me on Thursday nights.
That is our night, not Sunday.
My mother Pearline used to say, [music] on the porch of the house on Avenue F, when the mosquitoes were bad and the Delta heat [music] was sitting on the roof like a man who would not leave, “The Lord does not always send what you asked for.
[music] Sometimes he sends what you need.
” I did not ask for Damon.
I did not know Damon existed, not really, not as a grown man with his [music] father’s jaw and his father’s smile.
I had sent birthday cards with $20 inside for [music] 15 years, and I had hoped, the way old women in the Delta hope, which is to say quietly and without expectation.
[music] The Lord sent what I needed.
He sent me a grandson who knew how to read a bank statement.
He sent me a boy who came [music] home.
If you are listening to this and you have a grandmother you have not visited, well, you know what I am going to say.
She may be sitting on a front porch in a house your grandfather wired, drinking sweet [music] tea with her porch light on.
If this story meant something to you, please leave a comment and tell me where you are watching from.
I read everyone.
Call [music] her.
She has been waiting longer than you know.
