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Saturday, May 3, 2008
Lifetime later, he met dad
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the photo, a father and son shake hands. They look just alike.
“Like twins,” said Reginald Andre Dube of Suwanee. “It’s amazing.”
So is his story.
He was raised by his grandparents in Charlotte and never knew his father. Relatives told Reginald that his dad, Noyce Dube, had died in a car accident on his way to the airport for a flight to Zambia, his home. It was a concocted tale.
“They were afraid someone would show up one day (from Africa) and take me away,” said Reginald, 37. “So my aunt made it up.”
In the 1970s, Noyce Dube and Shirley “Jean” Hollins met at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. They married, and she got pregnant. Noyce Dube had to return to South Africa, but he made arrangements for the child’s delivery. One day, he’d return to the United States, to his family. But the distance between the countries, coupled with the war front in Africa, prevented the reunion.
Reginald, meanwhile, had never bought into the tale about his father’s death. He started researching the matter when he turned 24. In April 2007, his wife, Sonya, came across an article in the Mail & Guardian Online, a newspaper in South Africa. It mentioned a man named Noyce Dube, headmaster of a school in Zimbabwe.
The newspaper article led to phone calls from Suwanee to Bulawayo, the second-largest city in Zimbabwe. Eventually the Dubes of Gwinnett hit pay dirt. Father and son exchanged letters and talked on the phone.
Until then, Noyce Dube had never known if he had a boy or a girl. Likewise, he didn’t know that his wife had died in a car accident when their son was an infant. He had no idea his late wife’s relatives deliberately kept him from his son. When he returned to Africa decades ago, he took out an ad in an American newspaper to locate his family. It proved fruitless.
“He’s still a little hurt,” Reginald told me.
The photo of this father and son was taken in mid-April in Zimbabwe. Reginald and Sonya had made their way through airport checkpoints when the door opened into a lobby. Reginald spotted a 68-year-old man, handsome, smiling and waving.
“It took us 21 hours to get over there, so my body was tired,” said Reginald, a finance manager at Gwinnett Place Honda. “As soon as I saw him and hugged him, all the energy came back. That’s when everything became real.”
Last year, Reginald also learned that he has two brothers and five sisters. He’d already traveled to London to meet three sisters prior to visiting his father. While in Africa, he met a brother and a slew of relatives.
“There are thousands of Dubes,” he told me. It’s a very big name, very prestigious. The family is known for academics. Me on the other hand, that’s another story.”
Speaking of stories, Reginald definitely has one he wants to share.
He’s writing a book about his search to find his father, one that has delivered a miracle.
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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