Bob Lyles

Raising Abraham Bob Lyles

It all began with a chance meeting on an airplane. Her name was never mentioned; she was finishing up law school and we began to converse about her education and her desire to succeed as a lawyer. She was an impressive young woman and her drive and charisma were inspirational to me. As I reflected on that chance meeting in the following days, I contemplated the qualities that take someone on the path to success and contribution. I thought afresh about the caliber of person who leaves their mark on their generation, who passes on a legacy of experience, education, self-sacrifice and character. And in the process of that time of reflection, I found myself compelled to sit at the computer and develop the story of 'Mary', a woman driven to developing a better life for herself and her young son in the wake of the murder of her husband. The odds against her are overwhelming; she is young, uneducated, a black mother struggling against the on-going tide of racism in rural Mississippi in the final salvos of World War II. Segregation is still the norm, prejudice still the birthright. But human spirit, drive and desire for legacy and contribution can overcome the darkest of blights. And so the story of Raising Abraham was born, a recipe mixed from a real-life unsolved murder of a sharecropper in my home county and a chance meeting on an airplane six decades later.