They Are All Our Sons: Principles to Ignite Our Boys

By Brad Zervas

Brad Zervas observed twenty years ago that the boys we once were are the men who we becomeand the same is true today.

Its a startling observation given that all is not well in America and around the worldespecially for young men of color.

They Are All Our Sons shares a series of tragic and uplifting stories that convey five key principles that can ignite these boys. These principles will lead them to a manhood rooted in grace, dignity, respect, community engagement, familial connection, and civility.

With nearly forty years of experience as a leader, educator, community activist and youth advocate, Zervas shares lessons from relationships with boys who have succeeded and soaredas well as insights from those who have been distracted, lost, and forgotten.

Our nation faces a crisis of epic proportions, and it is time to recognize that these boys have value and merit our love, attention, and commitment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: May 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489711793

Brad Zervas

Brad Zervas will tell his readers that he has been blessed – blessed with a family, a career and with the unyielding belief that we can be better. After graduating The University of Massachusetts with degrees in Education and Latin American Studies, he went on to lead some of this nation’s most storied social service organizations – and did this after leading a literary program at a maximum-security facility. He would respectfully remind his supporters that he followed a path with the conviction that intervention, kindness and empathy at their core, represent a pathway to a better life and to the fulfillment of the potential that is far too often ignored among legions of our children – children mired as such in trajectories of dysfunction, neglect and in the very premise that they remain invisible and somehow not worthy of our political will. Zervas’ three previous works: “They Are All Our Sons : Principles to Ignite Our Boys”; A Father’s Job Is Never Done: The Work, The Worry and the Wonder of it All”; and “The Loss of Civility and The Abduction of The Truth: Letters to the President”; have each received high praise – praise not sought, and praise better extended to those most in need. He would go on to maintain that to be truly and consciously humbled is a luxury afforded only to those with the means to do so. To those among us who are impacted and impaired by a global dynamic that threatens us all, Zervas would suggest that we consider something that transcends boarders, our religious differences, histories, and those elements of our traditions and backgrounds that should unite us rather than divide us. In weakness there does exist strength and he would ask that we weigh our individual capacities to make a difference and to shape a way forward that might allow us to reach greater clarity, community and commitment.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1178-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1180-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1179-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905588

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 5/23/2017

Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. I give you sound learning, so do not forsake my teaching. For I too was a son to my father, still tender, and cherished by my mother.

—Proverbs 3:10

Contents

Foreword

Principles of Brotherhood

Security and Stability

Independence

Restraint and Responsibility

Brotherhood and Fellowship

National Pride and Protection

Mercy

From Here to There

Closing Comments

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Brad Zervas’s They Are All Our Sons is an in-depth look into the struggles many of our young men go through in New York City and beyond. Zervas is an award-winning leader and educator who has worked with youth organizations for years and speaks to the plight of young men and absent fathers with abiding compassion. He brings attention to those issues in compelling fashion, while giving the reader a history of his own background. Whether it be through the Ascension Project, his time with the Boys’ Club of New York, or his time as a teacher and youth advocate, Zervas’s history can inspire those who seek to become more involved in these troubled times.

Unlike many young men of color growing up in the inner city today, I was fortunate to have a strong father at home who helped me and my two brothers stay on course and become successful contributors to society. There are thousands of young men today without strong father figures, but as you dive deeper into Zervas’s text, there is an understanding that with continued action, we can save more of our sons.

The big issue of the abduction of men’s souls through all-encompassing social ills, poverty, low academic standards, distorted media, and the absence of fathers can leave one exhausted wondering whether rescuing the next generation of young men is possible. It is certainly an uphill battle being fought, but Zervas remains on the forefront. He not only realizes the problems facing young men but also recognizes important aspects to character building, such as daily rituals that help serve as a sanctuary during the darkest storms; rituals can be an everyday platform that helps young men who are still growing and trying to secure their identities.

During Zervas’s career and experiences with inner-city boys, he has seen and heard the all-too-familiar trend of young men who are in a long line of fatherless homes dating back generations. In They Are All Our Sons, we learn about young men such as Raphael Jones, a son from parents of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. Like many of our sons, Raphael didn’t have a father figure to keep him focused and away from the dangers of the streets. Where we often see society shy away from a Raphael, Zervas stood boldly and helped a young man who was on the cusp of destruction. That is what the mission is all about. While there is no single way to solve the problems youths face, for years Zervas has offered national and international platforms to give young men opportunities to break away from damaged cycles in order to succeed.

They Are All Our Sons is a clear and cohesive read, focusing on important principles that give a better understanding of how young men can develop, while also giving anyone interested in helping a reliable blueprint to attack the issue at its core. Once you read it, you have entered into an improved state of consciousness on the topic of our troubled sons. Security and stability, independence, restraint and responsibility, brotherhood and fellowship are the main principles Zervas stands by in making his compelling case. His international background takes us to different corners of the globe as he extends young men’s horizons past their neighborhoods, helping them progress into citizens of the world. Imagine the transformation of an eighteen-year-old who visits the People’s Republic of China. This is what Zervas has done for years, devoting himself to helping young men represent something far greater than themselves or their neighborhood—rather their entire country.

They Are All Our Sons. The title itself is a powerful statement that challenges us to extend a hand to young men in our communities and help them in their development. Young men need a village, and, yes, a nation that values them and is willing to protect them.

Zervas has earned his accomplishments through hard work and dedication that is evident in each story and event that he details in They Are All Our Sons. The commitment Zervas has continually put into the work isn’t easy, yet he remains resilient and suggests that in the midst of exhaustion, despair, and feelings of being overwhelmed, things can be different—that we can, in fact, find hope.

David Banks

President and CEO

Eagle Academy Foundation

Principles of Brotherhood

My father the son of Greek immigrants, silenced now by his passing twenty years ago, still whispers in my ear. His father, who came to live with us when I was a teenager, tended to a small garden. He would remind me often that his father too had spent his days in an orchard, pruning trees that had been planted centuries earlier—before the wreckage of continents and the abduction of men’s souls.

Years later, I found myself walking in these very same orchards. The olive trees were twisted and gnarled yet holding fast to a soil known for a thousand years. My father’s father, as a boy, had become a man in the shadows of these trees—as had his father and a long line of other fathers who still brush up against me and remind me, touch me, scold me, celebrate me, and affirm that my own male ancestry is deep, profound, connected, and absolute in its ability to steady my course.

I now have my own son and grandsons who have followed—the new sentinels of this lineage. Certainly they will mark time differently. This is a new age unlike any other. Drawn as I am to this precipice, I hesitate almost daily, equivocate with insecurity, and wonder how I might hand this baton off to my own son so that he in turn might do the same for his sons. It is a marathon run through the millennium with ever-changing road markings and signposts indicating a new way forward. It has often been an avenue into darkness and separation – a destination unfamiliar to me but one familiar to far too many of my brothers.

I suspect I have arrived here by accident or perhaps by circumstance determined by others—by innocence, betrayal, loyalty, love, failure, redemption, and both fortune and misfortune. But I am here now: a man realized, a man questioning, and a man who recognizes that the absence of fathers in the lives of far too many of our children is yielding real havoc and destruction. The interruption of male ancestry and the abandonment of family, community, and personal responsibility have, in fact, caused irreparable harm and dysfunction. My effort here, my own sense of discovery and ministry, will insist that there is a better way—a way to rescue at least the next generation of boys. We must begin a dialogue that will take its cues from the current and succeeding generations of women left alone to mend wounds, interpret scars, forgive and forget, and lead our fathers back to the gardens they once so dutifully tended.

My intentions here are not so much to write a book as they are to present a manual and a document that can be easily read, incorporated into the daily routines of those serving boys on their paths to manhood, and then embraced by the boys themselves. I am also mindful of the families with whom I have worked—mostly women who, as the reader will recognize and discover, are those left with the real heavy lifting to do.

Now approaching my sixty-fifth birthday and my fortieth wedding anniversary, I am compelled to pause, to give thanks to those who have guided me, to acknowledge many of the young people who have so bravely shared their stories with me, and to sound an alarm—one that I hope will be heard as both a national and international call to action.

I’ve spent the better part of my career working with urban youth and particularly with urban boys of color. As a teacher, coach, mentor, community activist, musician, film producer, and not-for-profit leader, I have tried to leverage resources on behalf of the boys and young men with whom I have worked. Their journeys have been particularly ruinous, and they have suffered in the shadows and recesses of our general awareness and consciousness—leaving us with wounds that will take generations to heal and with some scars that will forever be indelible marks against us.

I am quite certain that most would agree there is no single solution to the problems so many of our urban boys of color are facing. I don’t believe I can offer anything new. I can, however, continue to be an eyewitness and practitioner and bring voice to those who