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Friday, October 5, 2007
“Father and son share a great discovery”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
His mother died in a car accident when he was 7 months old.
All Reginald Andre Dube knew about his father was what Aunt Bernadine had told him - that Noyce Dubé had died in a car accident, too, en route to the airport for a flight to Zambia, his home.
The story never convinced Dube, a Charlotte native who was raised by his grandparents. When he turned 24, he set out to locate the man he knew only from photographs. Research online and by other means proved fruitless - until April 2007.
What’s transpired since then is a story about faith, hope and miracles. It starts with a Google search, leads to phone calls, an exchange of letters, and a recent trip by Dube to London, England.
Noyce Dube and Shirley “Jean” Hollins were a couple in the early 1970s. She was a nurse. He studied or worked at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C.
Noyce Dube knew Hollins was pregnant when he returned to South Africa. He helped make arrangements for the delivery. He wanted the child to carry his name. The couple planned to reunite, but distance, the war front in Africa and other issues prevented it.
He never learned about Hollins’ death or whether they’d had a boy or girl. He even took out ads in an American newspaper. Nothing.
Reginald hit dead-ends, too. Google searches of his father’s name only turned Lucky Dube, a reggae artist. One day in April, his wife Sonya went online. Up popped an article from the Mail & Guardian Online, an electronic newspaper in South Africa. It mentioned Noyce Dube and identified him as a headmaster of a school in Zimbabwe.
Sonya contacted the author, who responded immediately with the phone number of an African man whose surname was Dube. When Sonya contacted him, he gave her the phone number of yet another Dube who resided in Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe.
“I was scared to call,” said Reginald, a finance manager at Gwinnett Place Honda who was an R&B singer/songwriter in his younger days.
So Sonya did all the talking.
The woman who answered the phone was courteous yet cautious. It’s not everyday a stranger calls - from Suwanee no less - with pointed questions. Her husband, she said, traveled frequently on business. He wasn’t home. Call back in a month or so, she told Sonya.
During a subsequent conversation, the woman confirmed that, Noyce Dube, her 68-year-old husband, had spent time in Charlotte in the 1970s. Later, Reginald wrote a letter to Dube, explaining who he was, what he’d been doing with his life.
Weeks later, Reginald and Sonya’s phone rang. A father was calling the son he’d never ever spoken to, whom he didn’t know about.
“I’ve always believed in God,” Reginald told me. “Now, I have no doubts.”
Noyce Dube recently wrote a five-page letter to his son, giving him the history of those years in Charlotte, recalling the special relationship he shared with Reginald’s mother.
“I want to assure you that I am your loving father,” he wrote. “… Let us have a special prayer to thank the Almighty for this great discovery of each other. I can’t wait much longer before I can see you and your family.”
Reginald, now 36, is trying to figure out a way to either visit his father or have his father visit. Airfare to Zimbabwe is outrageous - $2,500 or so for a one-way ticket.
Reginald and Sonya recently spent several days in London, England, visiting three of Reginald’s six siblings. Two others live in Africa; another lives in Canada. They’re professionals - engineers, lawyers and such. The youngest child hopes to pursue music. Years ago she wrote a song about wishing she had a brother, one who understood and enjoyed music.
She already has one.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail rbadie@ajc.com.
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