Little Sisters Motorcycle Club

Geoffrey Ernest Yellow

Geoffrey Ernest Yellow was born in Hamilton on Nov. 16, 1955, the first son of Ernie and Frances Yellow (née Tait). His father, an Englishman who moved to Canada after the Second World War, was a millworker at Stelco; his mother, originally from Scotland, worked as a newsroom secretary at the Hamilton Spectator before leaving to raise her children. (John was born next, then Mary.)

Like so many toddlers, Geoff adored the television show Romper Room, which featured “Ms. Lois” reading to groups of children and peering into her magic mirror. “He wanted to be on that show so badly, so I wrote in,” Frances remembers. “Sure enough, we got the call.” The program was taped at a downtown Hamilton studio, but because the Yellows didn’t own a car, Geoff’s dream-come-true required some early morning bus rides. “He thought it was wonderful,” Frances says. “He got to be a TV star for two weeks.”

When Geoff was 11, the family moved to Grimsby, a small town on the tip of Niagara’s wine region. He taught his little brother to fish in Forty Creek and skate without holding on to a chair. When they were teenagers, he took John to his first rock concert: Alice Cooper. “He was three years older, but he never minded me tagging along,” John says. Once, during a visit to the Canadian National Exhibition, Geoff won a giant stuffed giraffe. “People offered him money for it,” says Mary Dancer, his little sister. “But he came home and gave it straight to me. I am in my 40s now, and I still have that darn giraffe.”

In high school, Geoff played trumpet in the band and fell in love with his future wife, Nancy Corbett. They had two kids, Heather and Dave. A plumber by trade, Geoff took a job at the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, and over the next 26 years would work his way up to manager of environmental services. He literally knew every inch of the building—every nut and bolt, every pipe and vent.

When he wasn’t at work—or driving Dave to hockey practice, or taking Heather to band recitals (like her dad, she played the trumpet)—Geoff indulged in his other true love: wheels. He was so fond of his van—a 1976 Ford E-150, black with custom interior—that he co-founded a club for fellow “vanners.” “He met the other guy at a car wash,” his son says. “They didn’t know each other, but they both had nice vans, started talking, and decided to start a club.”

As his mother says, Geoff “was a good joiner.” At 42, he earned a spot on the Grimsby volunteer fire department—and was never seen again without a pager on his belt. He also volunteered at the Fergie Jenkins Foundation, where it was Geoff’s job to take care of the celebrities who came to town for fundraisers. “Gordie Howe was his first,” says Carl Kovacs, the foundation’s president. “Gordie was doing all these appearances, and he said to Geoff: ‘Geez, I need to get back to the hotel and take a shower.’ Geoff said: ‘No you don’t. You can shower at my place.

Closing Catherine Ferguson Academy: Robbing the Cradle of Hope ...

It seems like this story has been written for us since we were forced upon the shores of these United States of America. A grotesque picture book with chapter and verse depicting African men, who before being sold away or savagely beaten to death, granted only the freedom to breed Black children with the African women that would be left alone. The story, ripe with illustrations of these women held hostage by the sweet pain of mothering past loneliness-struggling to survive the harshest realities, the umbra of birthing babies void of hope.

Seems like the story was a grand mastermind of intentional design…and today the story lives on, yet told in epic portrayal.

So I instantaneously connected to that story when I began seriously contemplating the fate of Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit, a school for teen mothers and their children. To catch up on the struggle of CFA, read my previous post . But as I was saying, CFA is a school for teen mothers and their small children. We know from any evening news broadcast, the whereabouts of the fathers are highly likely behind prison walls and in detention centers, the new American plantation .We know this because our tragically failing education system disproportionately cripples our children, driving our boys into the prison pipeline and our girls into teen pregnancy and welfare dependency.

A hopeless cycle that has repeated itself unto our community so many times it has become the norm for too many across the African Diaspora. And so it is in Detroit. Yet, when vested and progressive educators got back to the basics, enhancing core curriculum by teaching economic development, agriculture and farming; honing affirmative parenting skills; encouraging breastfeeding (as we know the nutritional and research-based cognitive and sociological benefits this provides both mother and child); the results have stagnated the cycle of destitution and dependency. Now that the village of Catherine Ferguson Academy has found a way to slowly reverse a generational legacy of teenage pregnancy and dropout rates that buoy functional illiteracy, the system that created the “grand mastermind of intentional design” is interrupting progress and success.

Threatening the school with closure.

Now, granted not all Black girls are experience teen pregnancy or consider dropping out of high school. Many flourish, from being recognized as the brightest in their class to being accepted into distinguished universities to receiving Gates Scholarships. And so it may be very easy to separate the girls in our family on our block from those attending CFA.

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