When Giants Walked
My grandfather — Noel Catchings Womack — was a man of his time. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease shortly after I was born so I never knew him in the way grandchildren hope to. Instead, he was revealed to me through interactions with people who knew him. They would ask, “Womack? Are you Noel Womack’s grandson?”
“He was a great man,” they would say. “He came to our house late one night when my daughter was only a baby, and very sick.” I created a mythological idea of him that, in time, formed the foundations for my adolescent understandings of success, self-worth, and masculinity. He was a wealthy, White, highly-educated Southern man who was the breadwinner of his family as was expected of him. He was an excellent, hard-working doctor devoted to his patients and craft. He built a legacy for his family in the heart of the Deep South that, quite frankly, is part of the reason I am able to embark on this journey.