Brendan gregory biography of williams

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His writing credits include his works in the TV series The Colorblind Monologues , followed by the short film 13 Minutes. In addition, he has authored two books to date. Gregory has been married for a long time with his wife, Renee Williams. However, he is a person of private nature when it comes to his married and family bio. He has not made any formal statements on details of his love life, wife, marriage, or current marital status.

From his marriage with Renee, Gregory is the father to his five children, all sons. Next, he entered academics, working his way up from a professor, to a dean, then to president of City College of New York before becoming UC's president on Nov. By late '53, however, Buster had lost the cafe and his wife over drinking. Soon the boys would lose what they thought was their race.

Often I am asked how a mixed-race boy growing up in abject poverty, shunned by both blacks and whites, could earn five college degrees and become a university president. This is my story. Until I was 9, I lived a comfortable life as the son of reasonably wealthy "white" Virginia restaurant owners, Mary and James "Buster" Williams.

Buster was gregarious, charming, volatile, laughing one minute, scary the next. My mother was remote. The late '40s and early '50s were good times for those of us in America with enough money and the "right" skin color. I attended whites-only schools, whites-only skating rinks, whites-only theaters. Dad was said to have the Midas touch, and his business holdings seemed to expand daily.

I knew about poverty, of course, and I knew about segregation -- separate schools, not as bright and new as mine, and separate swimming pools, not freshly painted each summer like mine. Black folks, who often didn't have the price of a meal, came to the back door. The darker moments in my early life were personal, not racial, but slowly became more frequent as my father's drinking exploded into full-blown alcoholism, followed by emotional and physical abuse.

Our fragile family disintegrated, almost overnight. My mother fled with my youngest brother and my sister when I was Mike, my other younger brother, and I were left with ringside seats to watch our father's descent into the oblivion of alcoholism. Day by day, we saw our material possessions disappear -- the restaurant, the tavern, the townhouse, the cars.

Then we lost our dignity. Every morning, Mike and I stood beside the highway waiting for our school bus, while Dad begged strangers for two quarters so we could buy a hot school lunch, often our only meal of the day.

Brendan gregory biography of williams

As we clutched those quarters, we felt both shame and relief. With no life left for us in Virginia, the three of us boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Muncie, Ind. My brother and I assumed we were off to visit my mother's parents, our white middle-class grandparents with whom we had spent many fun-filled summers and happy Christmases. But after a long night of riding on that bus, my life changed forever.

Somewhere in the middle of Ohio, my father leaned across the aisle and asked, "Greg, do you remember Miss Sallie? She was a tall, thin black woman who floated in and out of our lives. Not a person of consequence. My brother and I thought she was kind of mean, to tell the truth. I took a closer look at my father, who at different times had passed for both Greek and Italian.

I had to admit he didn't look exactly white. Goosebumps covered my arms as I realized that whatever he was, I was. He told us, in the vernacular of the time, "Life is going to be different from now on.