“For me, it shows a lot of people that you need to fight to be in your kids’ lives sometimes. You fight until you can’t fight any more. That’s all I was trying to be, a father in my kids’ lives.”
A Chicago court has granted Dwyane Wade the sole ‘care, custody and control’ of his two sons with ex-wife, Siohvaughn Wade whom he separated in August 2007 but was only officially divorced in June 2010.
—Men’s Divorce Law Blog (quote and image)
I hate the Miami Heat perhaps more than any professional sports teams on the planet. The LeBron show is something that I don’t admire. The team brought together with massive egos and tons of money. I’ve seen them up close when watching my Celtics. I used to grudgingly accept Dwayne Wade’s toughness and clutch shooting. But ever since they assembled the big three, it’s been a team to despise. I am a Ray Allen guy, shooting perfecting based on hard work and discipline. Not the middle linebacker with freak ability who hangs on South Beach.
Well, I am going to have to change my tune.
I didn’t know that Dwayne Wade fought for custody of his kids, just like I did. I didn’t know that he has dedicated his life to bringing them to school and being as involved dad as he could possibly could be. I didn’t know that his priority is to address staggering single parent statistics particularly among African-American kids.
Those are frankly the issues I care most about too. About how we all become good fathers, even in divorce, even when the law conspires to make it gut-wrenchingly hard.
Standing ovation Dwayne.
I’m not sure I can root for the Heat but I sure am rooting for you as a dad.
♦◊♦
The moms at school drop off didn’t know what to make of him at first.
“I was like one of the only dads,” Wade says with a smile. “Everybody was looking at me, it was kind of weird. They called me ‘Mr. Mom’ for a while.”
It’s an apt nickname for a man who’s on a mission to bring back a bedrock American value: family.
Wade is reaching out to fathers and sons through community groups and his non-profit organization, Wade’s World Foundation,to combat the jaw-dropping statistic that 72 percent of African-American kids are being raised by a single parent, mostly women.
Even President Obama asked Wade to become a kind of ambassador-at-large for fatherhood.
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