Raymond Anthony Jenkins was born in Bartow, Florida in Central Florida, the oldest of five siblings. His mother was just 16 at the time of his birth, while his father was absent for most of his life.
Who is Ray Lewis’ father Elbert Ray Jackson?
Not much was known about his father’s life other than that he was a record-setting high school wrestler before he was incarcerated for drug-related offenses.
Ray Lewis, For me, the hard part was mostly in what I didn’t have. I didn’t have a father. I do now, but I didn’t then. The man I now know as my father, Elbert Ray Jackson, is a father in DNA only. He claims the title, but he didn’t earn it. He looks like me and moves like me, but he never took the time to know me and never played the part.
He left the day I was born. He came back a couple of years later, stayed long enough to father my twin sisters, Laquesha and Lakeisha, but not long enough to pick me up or change my diaper.
Far as I ever knew, he was gone the next day, the same deal all over again, and as I write this I think of the cycle of abandonment that’s colored my family. Every twenty years, there’s been another link broken, another hard road laid, going back four generations.
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