It was that very, very cold night in December that would change my life.

I was very young, yet even at five years old, I had always dreamed of attending college and receiving my degree. One obstacle stood in my way--poverty. We were dirt poor. I sadly watched constantly my illiterate father drown himself in alcohol. Not once did he ever have that father-to-son talk. Not once did he say to us that he loved or cared for us. Yet, on the other hand, God gave to us our hard-working Christian mother, a woman who was the opposite of our father, a woman who prayed to God every night, praying and showing just how much she truly loved her sons.

Every day of my life, I often thought about where my footsteps would lead me. Here I was constantly surrounded by poverty, violence, and racism. Would I end up hanging on some street living in poverty or, worse, dead? That one question that constantly haunted me with every footstep I took was simply, "How would I survive in this world without my mother? How could I live without you?"