Amazon Woman

I spotted her from a half a mile away. I was on my morning run lost in thought at the beauty of the day. There were no clouds in the sky to hinder the brilliant sun’s dance on the ocean. The weekend crowd has yet to descend on the island so there are only a few other people on the beach but Lucy is definitely one.

I couldn’t miss her.

Lucy Hall is an Amazon of a woman over six feet tall. Her dark black skin glistens in the sun as recognizes me about the same time that I spot her. She starts laughing and clapping as I run to her and we embrace and I strain my neck upward to hit her face with a kiss.

“Hello My Brotha!” she gives me as a regular greeting.

Sometimes she calls me handsome. “Hello Handsome” and she’s more subdued when I get this greeting and I know the conversations are going to be serious.

Today she is excited because she didn’t know I was here and I didn’t know she was so it is “Hello Brotha!” So I understand that she is delighting in us unexpectedly running into one another on a mostly deserted beach. She believes it’s a gift from God.

Lucy is the President of the Mary Hall Freedom House in Atlanta, a program for women who are addicts. She came from these women and her story is as compelling as they come. Out of nowhere she has built one of the country’s most unique and effective programs. She is also famous and has graced numerous magazines, television shows, radio spots, and newspaper articles.

We met nine years ago in Washington D.C. when Lucy was being awarded the “Community Health Leadership Award” by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which included a $100,000 cash prize and a ceremony at the National Press Club. I was one of the speakers as a previous winner.

In the middle of my speech Lucy said out loud, “Oh you are going to be significant in my life!”

I’d never had that happen before during a speech and I remember just stopping and staring at her. She was grinning at me with knowing eyes sitting in the middle of an audience of perhaps fifty people. But she has proven right. Lucy and I are close.

She often retreats to Tybee and either brings a bunch of folks and rents a place or she comes alone and stays in the apartment downstairs. She’s made numerous visits to Union Mission and I’ve been to the Mary Hall Freedom House and we both blew one another away in the stuff that we were working on.

Later, I was at Marlin Monroes, talking to Chela Gutierrez who has the most color arms on the planet, when Lucy strolled in.

“Hello Handsome,” she smiled.

We took a table inside with a view of the ocean and immediately fell into deep conversation like good friends do. So I caught her up on everything and then she caught me up on everything and then she looked at me and asked, “Tell me where you are with God.”

I laughed. “OK, let’s frame this conversation first. You use very traditional religious language and I don’t. But I understand what you’re saying and you can understand the way that I say things.”

She laughed with sparkling eyes and an evil grin.

“I think we’re fine,” I answered, “she and I dance most every day.

“You listening to Him?” she asked.

“She always whispers,” I said back. “I wish she talked a little louder.”

“So long as you’re listening,” she concluded.

And we laughed together though I knew that Lucy was being as serious as a heart attack.

Then we made plans to see each other in a few weeks when I’m in Atlanta before hugging each other and going our own ways. I had a paper to finish and she wanted to invade the Tybee Island YMCA so that it achieved integration.

You’ve got to love friends like that.