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Superman: A Son Talks About His Bond With His Father

Marquan Walton
Basim Blunt
/
WYSO
Marquan Walton

My story is about the night my dad was shot.

His name is Marvis Walton. I wouldn't say he is my favorite parent, but we have always had a different connection than me and my momma, Laquanna Hindsman.

I've always been told that I look more like Momma. Some would even go so far to say that I was her twin. I never agreed, but this fact has always kept us close. We used to crack jokes saying how ugly one another was, but the response was always the same, "But you look just like me."

I got my ears pierced when I was around the age of six. I was with my dad, my godbrother Joe, and my uncle Barry, who just recently died. One night me and my dad watched 300 Empire. My mom and grandma didn't want me to watch it because of the killing and nudity. He let me watch it when we were alone. He didn't care too much about the sex scenes because I closed my eyes anyway and I would have to know about it sometime.

People in my family say me and my dad have some sort of spiritual connection. Whenever something bad would happen to my dad, I would cry uncontrollably at the same time that it happened.

The night of the incident, it was just any other night. Me and my mom ate stuffed shells, and it was the weekend so I got to sleep downstairs with the TV. My rest was short lived after being awakened from a bad dream where I was in a barn where all the animals came after me and pinned me against a wall. I was trying to get up the stairs to my Dad. I was terrified. I woke up and told my mom about my dream. She told me to go back to sleep.

Roughly five minutes later we were awoken again but this time by a phone call from my uncle Jeff, my mom's brother, telling us that my dad had just been shot.

I asked my mom about that moment.

"Of course I tried to be strong but I was still nervous," she said. "I got phone calls, and they told me that he had been shot ten times and that three bullets exited out of his body and he still had seven bullets still in his body and he was in surgery."

When she received the news, my mom began to cry but rushed upstairs to get dressed.  I never see my mom cry. Instead of crying, I was in shock; I knew it was real. She told me to go get some clothes so we could leave, and we went to the hospital. At the hospital, I don't remember much. Probably because I went back to sleep in the car, and since I kept waking up, I could not stay up the whole time we were there. I do remember having put my Superman costume on.  I'm not sure why I decided to put on my Superman costume.

I asked my grandma, Sandra Holmes, whether she though my dream was a sign.

"I don't want to call it a premonition, but yes I believe that sometimes spiritual that kids are connected to their parents, their pain, or they can feel their pain. And I believe that that's just a connection that you and your dad have."

I did briefly get to see my dad. I remember he had on a neck brace and was patched in the areas he was shot. Seeing my dad in that condition, broken, I remember he couldn't look at me because of his neck brace. I was so young and small, I couldn't get him to notice me in the room.

At the moment, my father is incarcerated for child support; he was sentenced to nine months but is now nearing his final days.

I called him at Ohio Correctional Facility to ask him about the night of the incident. He didn't want to talk it, so instead we talked about my dream.

"When I heard about your dream, it kind of shocked me though, like [I was] surprised," he said.

Marquan Walton is a student at the Dayton Early College Academy. To learn more about DECA, visit the school's website: http://daytonearlycollege.org/  Special thanks to Anne Rasmussen, Director of Community Involvement at DECA. Dayton Youth Radio is supported by the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

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