Keith Pompey: Giving thanks

I'm blessed.

It's been obvious since April, 26 1994, the day I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.

But for whatever reason, I have never taken the time to vocally thank the men who blessed me.

Things will be different on this Thanksgiving Day. My uncles by marriage, Ernest Waters and Alonza Baker, are in store for a call that's long overdue.

You see, they're my inspirations, saviors and biggest fans.

I'm going to thank them for showing me the true meaning of a

real

man.

Thank Waters for demanding the best of me. Thank him for taking me in every summer to live with his family in a suburb not far from Pittsburgh. And thank him some more for requiring me to do biweekly book reports during my summer break.

I will thank Baker for the endless educational trips to Chinatown, Valley Forge and local universities. Thank him for attending all my athletics events at North Catholic.

And I'll thank them for taking the load of my single-parent mother, who made a way for her children to attend Catholic schools. But it never felt as if half of my childhood was spent in a single-parent home.

That's because my uncles were always there, so much that some things were taken for granted.

I expected Baker to attend all my games. He and his wife, my aunt Pauline Baker, were usually at the stadiums before the team bus pulled in. And if they weren't, we had problems.

Maybe I'm a little superstitious. But something about seeing them before athletic events made me perform better.

I didn't care that they were often my only family members in attendance. Just seeing them in the stands made up for it all. No matter how far the trip or how bad the weather was, they were always there.

And Baker was there for much more than my sporting events. He was big on exposing me to different environments. That's why we frequently watched foreign films and ate at restaurants that served foreign food.

Like Baker, Waters exposed to me a different lifestyle. From age 6 to 17, my summers were spent in Western Pennsylvania.

Talk about the fun associated with being an inner-city kid spending the summer in what was an upper-class suburb. I often joke that I was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before there was the television show.

It wasn't all leisure time, though.

Waters had his rules.

My cousins and I had to check out books from the library. Thirteen days later, we were required to give a review. If he wasn't satisfied, you weren't allowed out that weekend.

My uncle also quizzed me on current events and made sure that I brushed up on my vocabulary.

To him, it was never a question of: Are you going to college? It was: What proper steps are you taking to attend a prestigious one?

The exposure, love and support my uncles provided are major reasons why I am who I am today.

And on this Thanksgiving, I want to give an overdue thanks.