August 6th: Harry & Jim

Final day of the LDSBA convention 2010.  The booksellers looked cautiously hopeful about the coming fourth quarter midst the global economic downturn.  I carry a prayer in my heart for all of them.

I haven’t been around much this week and I’ve been missing Lynne who’s been doing the heavy lifting carrying for ALL the family.  She left me a text that she’d gotten tickets for us to see BIG RIVER at the Sundance Summer Theatre.  The bonus was that the part of Jim, the slave Huck Finn helps escape, was being played by my good friend Harry Bonner.

I can’t talk about Harry Bonner with a big smile animating my face.  This is a truly special man.  Husband to Debra Bonner who has sung with me and for me for years.  (The best gospel singer I have had the privilege of working with.  It was her performance of YOU’RE NOT ALONE, sung at the Black Gospel Music Workshop of America back in 1989 that taught me what my song was really all about.)  Harry is also the father of EXCEPTIONALLY talented children, all of whom are REQUIRED to call me UNCLE MIKE!   In fact, tonight as we were collecting our tickets at WILL CALL I heard a voice cry out, “Uncle Mike!!!!” and it was Clotiel Bonner, one of Harry’s daughter’s who was on a break from  performing with the National Touring Company of THE COLOR PURPLE.  She was there to support her dad.

Harry is an educated man with a couple of Master’s degrees, but not afraid to do whatever it takes to provide for his family.  When I first met Harry he was working three jobs to help keep his children in the best of schools, and I asked him how he felt doing these jobs I thought were beneath a man with his background and training.  He smiled and said, “Michael, there’s dignity in all work.  I hope to be able to use all my talents someday, but I’m grateful to be working in any capacity that will bless my family”

Well, Harry has done many things, but I have never seen him like I did at Sundance tonight.  He brought such life to the part of Jim, the slave racing for freedom from Mark Twain’s classic that I believed he was a real and not a fictional character.  And as much as I’ve always loved BIG RIVER, The Musical, I was more moved by it tonight, in large part, because of Harry’s portrayal.

I got a chance to see Harry/Jim after the show.  As always, his big smile and radiant countenance lifted my soul and made me feel like the most important and loved person on earth.  He walked us down to where the shuttle would take us to our car…making sure Lynne and I and our friends who joined us, were safely on our way.  If there ever was a man of dignity and grace and an example of a man who understands true happiness on the deepest level, it’s Harry Bonner.  My M2B:) Hero!