Secret Origins: How the Holmon Men Learned to Nerd Together

According to my Mother, my dad was a humorous nerdy guy in his youth. Anytime she’d point that out in conversation I’d ask to see the receipts because I never saw a glimpse of that growing up. I knew my father as a man that immersed himself in black history (much like Arthur Schomburg) as well as various religions. There was a moment in college that made him realize the impact that black people had upon history in various fields (science, math, medicine) that wasn’t brought to his attention in his youth. The rest of his life was basically dedicated to finding out anything he possible could about what most textbooks/books through out history left out regarding Africans/African Americans as well as other people of color. What this meant for me growing up is that while most kids were playing sports with their dads (we tried basketball, I was horrible at it, still am) I was hearing him talk about who the father of modern medicine was considered (Imhotep), Egyptian medical tools with better precision then the ones we use today, where the cesarean birth procedure originated from, etc, etc. This was good, but here’s the thing… I was like 7 years old at the time. This was literally all my father would talk about with me. This is all academic black nerd material I’m being bombarded with while I’m still in Superman draws. Dad was making me pause Street Fighter II to read passages from the Quran, stating how man was created from smooth black mud. Teacher and reluctant student that rea…