The teachers who supported Otis Bullock Jr. stepped in and pointed out a completely different path he might take through life, educating him in both academics and how to get along in the world. And though his mother continued to struggle with drug addiction throughout his adolescence, she supported him when she was there. His father dealt drugs through the first 10 years of his life. But Otis Bullock Sr. went straight before his son entered that dangerous period of adolescence when the streets come calling for new workers.
“The first time I got a paycheck for an honest day’s work,” says Otis Sr., of a job he got unloading boxes at Toys ‘R’ Us, “that night was the best sleep I ever had. I thought, ‘I’m never going back.’ And I never did.”
Today, Otis Sr. is a church deacon and Denita Washington is 13 years sober, with an accelerated master’s degree in human services from Lincoln University and a steady job helping ex-offenders reenter society. “What Otis probably doesn’t know,” she says, “is that I told his grandmother, ‘Don’t you tell Otis anything that’s going on with me’ — because I did not want him to be distracted.”
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