What, exactly, does an editor who looks like me write about Black History Month?
In this case, maybe the best way to honor Black History Month is to remember one gentleman — a colleague and a friend — who made this nook of Orange County a better place.
The late Aubrey de Souza was an advertising manager for this newspaper group a few years ago. A native of the Northeast, he’d been a Marine, an entrepreneur and a civil rights activist who’d done more than his part for the cause. He loved jazz, sports, fashion and his family and friends. He told great stories about seeing the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, owning a jazz club in Greenwich Village, and more. Even in his Golden Years, he was up on current events. He could talk about anything.
He was also a listener, with a gentle, non-judgmental way about him. Folks congregated around him, whether at his desk in the old Cypress office or at a sales meeting in Seal Beach, hoping to be in his orbit, it seemed.
I’d smile when I’d hear his signature telephone goodbye to his wife, Barbara: “Change the world, baby. Change the world.”
One day, a large, loud man bullied his way past our receptionist, came face to face with me to issue some complaint and, in the process, used a slew of racial slurs. Before you knew it, Aubrey was shaking the guy’s hand. “How you doing, man?” Nobody would have blamed Aubrey for slapping the guy, but instead, he calmed him down, walked him out. It was like watching a principal send a boy home.
Later, I asked him about the way he’d handled it. “You can’t fix that guy in 15 minutes,” he said.
I only knew Aubrey for a handful of years, which is to say there’s so much I didn’t know about him. What I did know is that he was a good, good man, and a mentor.
The photo that’s running with this column is on the wall in my office, to remind me, as he often said, to “Get up, dress up, show up, but don’t ever give up.”
This one’s for Aubs, and for Black History Month.
Brady Rhoades is an editor. He can be reached at brhoades@localnewspapers.org.What, exactly, does an editor who looks like me write about Black History Month?
In this case, maybe the best way to honor Black History Month is to remember one gentleman — a colleague and a friend — who made this nook of Orange County a better place.
