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Fisher relates life story to Alumni Arena audience
By ANN WHITCHER
Reporter Contributor
Speaking quietly, conversationally and without notes, author and Hollywood screenwriter Antwone Fisher delivered a riveting tale of a life that was broken, and then soared.
Fisher, whose astonishing life story was the subject of a book, "Finding Fish," and a movie, "The Antwone Fisher Story," spoke of a brutish upbringing that might seem unbelievable were it not for the contemporaneous social workers' reports that accompany his harrowing, first-person account.
Fisher's address last night in Alumni Arena was the opening event in the 2003-04 Distinguished Speakers Series. He was the UB Reads Choice Speaker. All incoming freshmen were given "Finding Fish" to read before arriving on campus as part of the UB Reads program.
"Growing up, I never imagined that anyone would be interested in coming out to see me," he told his audience following an introduction by President William R. Greiner. Born in prison in 1959 to 17-year-old Eva Mae Fisher, Fisher spent his first weeks of life in a Cleveland orphanage. He was then placed with a loving foster mother, Mrs. Nellie Strange.
At age two, however, he was removed from Strange's home, a decision that was to have profound effects. According to Fisher, records show that Strange had "too much affection" for him, unacceptable conduct in the social services thinking of the day.
Fisher went on to spend his formative years with a cruel couple, who are called Rev. and Mrs. Pickett in the book. The Pickett's foster home was the scene of regular beatings from "Mizz Pickett" that included being struck with switches and extension cords. Fisher also was sexually abused by a neighbor woman and saw his foster brother, Wayne, also suffer a great deal in the Pickett's home.
"Enduring all this, I didn't realize that I was being abused (because) I had been born into it," Fisher said. It was his search for love that became the leitmotif for his life—a way to rise above his terrible surroundings.
Fisher described how he would pocket bits of kindness when they would occur, accepting the concern of a fourth-grade teacher as a way to instill a sense of hope, letting it reverberate within. Whereas Wayne fought back with destruction—embarking on a crime spree at age 19—Fisher was able to distance and protect himself from what was going on.
"I was willing to suffer in a different kind of way," he said. "I could pretend I was special, I could live in the moment when it was all too much to bear."
Now 45, Wayne has been incarcerated since age 19.
At one point, Fisher's foster mother filled the home with mental patients who were deemed able to live outside an institution. Their presence served the purpose of distracting his foster parents so that Fisher could begin to pursue a life "outside."
Mizz Pickett had assigned him the duty of bathing and putting to bed one of the patients. Fisher was then 10 years old. "It was so hard for me to hide these people from my friends," he said with a smile.
Matters reached a breaking point when his foster mother found a pretext to throw him out, giving him 50 cents and a brown paper bag, and directing him to return "where he came from." For Fisher, this meant a return to the social services agency that had managed his care since he was identified as "Baby Boy Fisher" and made a ward of the state.
By then a teenager, Fisher was not a candidate for adoption and so quickly found himself in a reform school by default. What most would find scary surroundings became instead a place of protection for Fisher, who remained there until age 18. He then spent time in a men's shelter, where his companions included some "unsavory people."
Fisher described the period of his life where he wandered at the sidelines of criminality, in which Butch, who, according to the book, "ran prostitutes, numbers, drugs, stolen goods and whatever else could be bought and sold outside the arm of the law," became a kind of protector. "For a time, he was more or less a father to me," Fisher said.
Butch put Fisher to work collecting money from prostitutes and running other criminal "errands." "I really became accustomed to a world that a lot of people don't want to see."
For awhile, Fisher lived in a basement, made available by Jesse, who was later killed. For a time he was homeless, until time spent sleeping outdoors in the Cleveland winter forced a decision to seek out a U.S. Navy recruiter. Fisher spent 11 years in the Navy, later using his military training, along with his own rules—self-imposed since age 14—to begin to regulate and recover his life.
For instance, he followed through on his teenage promise to never smoke, do drugs, drink or have children. He was to reverse the decision about being a father, happily relating that he and his wife, LaNette, now have two children and a loving home.
Fisher described how a naval psychiatrist (played by Denzel Washington in the film) helped him uncover and deal with the immense pain of his childhood.
"I discovered that most everyone needs a psychiatrist," he said to audience laughter and applause. After his discharge, Fisher worked as a prison guard, an occupation that felt like a "disservice" to his past.
Gradually, his insistence on defining his own life emerged in the form of powerful writing. He traced his odyssey from someone who to that point had never had more than $200, to a lucrative screenplay and publishing career and his status as "the first African American to earn a million dollars from a screenplay," a fact that he related with obvious pride.
In remarks both during the address and a question-and-answer session, Fisher urged patience, as well as persistence, in dealing with life's problems. His questioners included children now in foster care, a UB student who has lost both parents and Buffalo area teachers of at-risk kids.
He also urged them to have realistic goals and to "write about your experiences and the things you dream of." It was important, he said, to "live the life you're given," to not bemoan the past, but not to flee from it either.
"You have to deal with your past, live with it and sometimes you have to get help when you can't do it yourself."