Washington, DC — Africa mourns today for it has lost its greatest advocate in America with the passing of US Congressman Don Payne, and such an advocate with so much experience and passion will not rise again soon.
So, too, did the poor and downtrodden lose one of the few Congress members who still care about their fate and understood their lives so well. His passing is also marks the passing of a more compassionate Congress and of an era gone by. For me, especially, his death is also the passing of a long-time friend.
I knew Don Payne for the majority of both our lives, having met and become his friend nearly 44 years ago, and for me his life became a marker of the progress of my own life. We traveled together internationally early in life, and I was close by when it became a matter of time before I knew he would run for Congress. Over the years, we did not meet often, as we were in different cities, sometimes in different countries, certainly in different states of mind, and our lives were seemingly headed independently of one another. Yet, fate and not our own will, brought our paths together, and for one another we became markers of time, growth, and interests. In the end those interests brought us back together where we had first met, in the international arena, and especially to Africa, once again for the same cause and usually in unison. This was how it began with Don and now this is how it has ended.
We did not grow up together, for sure, and in our day, the likelihood of us knowing one another earlier than we did would have been almost impossible. I was a kid in a small town of southern Indiana, son of a teacher and there was not a black family in the entire county, and Don grew up in Newark, son of a dockworker. Our worlds were very different and the circumstances of our lives equally so.
By the time I had met Don, he was a widower in his early 30s, raising three young children by himself. He never remarried though he was never wanting for female companionship. He had worked in Newark before becoming an elected Freeholder of Essex County. I had just finished my junior year at Indiana University and was headed to a Middle East refugee camp to work for the summer under the auspices of the YMCA, which then was very active in international refugee work. Our group stopped at the YMCA national headquarters, then in New York, a block from City Hall, for briefings. During those two days a reception was held and it was there that I met Don for the first time. He seemed not exceptional to me, and I no doubt made at least an equal impression on him. I was told that he was involved in the national YMCA and that was that. I spent the summer in southern Lebanon, returned to campus and went about with a minimum of effort to graduate and worry about my probable future in the Vietnam War. Little did I know how much my life would intertwine with Don's for much of the next decade and the years beyond.
In the spring of 1969 I was notified that I had been selected for a two year program at the World Alliance of YMCAs in Geneva, Switzerland, and I suppose because I was a small town boy from a very rural county, my draft board gave me what they shouldn't have - a deferment, so I could work abroad. something others from the county seldom did. It was a ticket out of Vietnam and out of the small towns of Indiana, and it was one that I gladly accepted.
Again, I found myself back in New York for training before embarking for Europe and again I met Don, who now was a board member of the National YMCA, and was soon to become the first black President of the National YMCA, as well as its youngest President. By virtue of that position, he also became a board member of the World Alliance of YMCAs in Geneva, the same place I was headed.
Before going to Geneva, we both attended the YMCA's World Council meeting in Nottingham, England, and because of our youth relative to others spent a great deal of time together, along with several other younger attendees from around the world. We watched the first moon landing together while in Nottingham, and then traveled together to Liege, Belgium for the World Assembly of Youth, then an instrument of the Cold War, created to counter the youth bodies of the Soviet Union and its allies. Don was a U.S. delegate and although I was officially an observer, representing a quasi-neutral organization, Don made it possible for me to be a part of most meetings of the U.S. delegation.
It was an extraordinary learning experience for me. Both of us also met two Belgian women during the time in Liege and at every opportunity outside the conference the four of us were somewhere in the countryside enjoying the summer of youth and wine. During one of my last long meetings with Don, he told me that the woman was still his friend. I did not doubt this because women seemed to always remain friends with Don long after the fires of passion had died out. In fact, I know several who were still his friends even to the end. I marveled at this aspect of his life.
In Geneva, I was assigned to staff and Don became active in the Board's refugee committee. He eventually became the chairman of that committee.
The YMCA had refugee work around the world, and Don traveled to nearly every location where the Y was active with refugees, from the Middle East to Timor and throughout Africa. It was here that his love for Africa was first planted and within his heart it sprouted and grew. Each time he came to Geneva we got together for a dinner and then he was gone.
I returned to the United States for graduate work and what I thought would someday be a career in law. Don stayed in New Jersey between his trips around the world. The country was at war with itself as much as it was at war in Vietnam, though the end was in sight. While racial tensions were still at a high point, Don Payne in his work through the YMCA proved to be an important bridge builder. He was also building bridges internationally through his work with the refugee committee of the World Alliance of YMCAs. He had made many friends already in Africa, including Prime Minister Makonnen of Ethiopia who was chairman of the board of the World Alliance. Little could I imagine in 1973 that these relationships would bring us back together again.
In 1974 I was asked to serve on a planning committee for part of the UN World Population Conference in Bucharest. My employer at the time gave me the time off, and once again I was back in international life and beginning to understand that this was where the rest of my life would be spent. When I got off the plane back in the United States I learned from the television set in Kennedy Airport that Makonnen and about 60 others had been executed in a coup in Ethiopia, another victim of the Cold War.
A person my age, Tamrat Samuel from the Ethiopian YMCA, had been with me in Bucharest, and I wondered what would happen to him. I did not learn for another thirty years that he had been arrested upon his return and spent the next three years in prison before being tortured to death.
That fall, the U.S. YMCA held its national meeting in Kansas City, where I was then working, and I was invited to give a presentation on events in Bucharest. There again was Don. The circumstances were cheery. Don presented the eulogy for Makonnen and for the first time I saw him weep.
I had not heard Don speak so eloquently and I had not seen the hurt that his heart carried until then. This remains one of my lasting memories of Don Payne. Although I would never see him weep again, I would also never doubt the compassion that he carried with him always. I believe that perhaps more than any other event the execution of Makonnen and others that night in Addis Ababa was the spark that lit the fire that Don carried for the cause of human rights and democracy worldwide.
As I worked for the YMCA up until 1982, I saw Don frequently. He was one of my biggest boosters for programs I was developing. I knew he was preparing himself for a run for Peter Rodino's seat in New Jersey. I considered it unlikely that he would defeat one of the most powerful Congressmen at that time, but Don told me times were changing. He said it would take him two attempts but he said he could win. By this time I had a good network of NGOs in New York, and Don asked me for suggestions as to which ones he should work with more closely. I suggested several including the US Committee for UNICEF, whose executive was a good friend. Later I learned that Don approached the executive and asked to be on the board, stating not only why he had a background ideal to help UNICEF, but also exactly why association with UNICEF was important to his future. He was soon on the board of the US Committee for UNICEF, aligning one of the most important children's welfare organizations to his cause.
As predicted, Don lost in the primary in 1986 to Peter Rodino, but he had taken more than one-third of the vote, and the handwriting was on the wall. Rodino chose not to run for election in 1988, and Don handily won the primary and the subsequent election for Congress. He became the first African-American Congressman from New Jersey and never had serious opposition for his twelve terms in Congress. My former boss at the YMCA, Frank Kiehne, who had been the key driver to Don becoming the first black President of the National YMCA, became his foreign policy director, and many of his staff participated in the international leadership development program I was now running. We talked over the phone rarely, and I was in some ways during that period closer to some of his staff than to Don. Frank, however, would always remain in close touch with Don.
I did not see Don much in the 1990s, perhaps once a year. The discussions seldom were on the present, but usually always swayed back into days past. We agreed on most issues so political discussions lasted only briefly as part of our dinner. Don almost always had a beer with his dinner, and then we would have a couple more and call it a night.
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We did not come back together again until after I became President of the Corporate Council on Africa. He told me he had detested the Corporate Council because he felt it was arrogant. He was one of the first persons to call me to congratulate me and said he hoped I could make the changes needed. When I needed a Congressman as speaker early in my tenure to lend credibility to a rebuilding organization, Don came to speak. He spoke at CCA several times and never missed one of our Biennial Summits. I did not call on Don much. I never wanted to abuse the friendship, but when I needed him he was always there. We consulted on a number of issues, but since I was almost always in agreement with Don's positions, I added little except comfort and support.
In the spring of 2011 I learned that Don had colon cancer. He had asked that I not say anything, and I did not, not even to the few people I knew also knew his secret. In September, I knew that he was still undergoing treatment. Yet, he came one last time to our Biennial US-Africa Summit. I had not expected him to come, and understood why he had come. We talked about getting together soon. He said he would like that very much. One day, too many days later, I called to his office and learned that Don would not be in for a few days, and understood the meaning of that.
Last week the call came from someone close to his family that Don had been moved to hospice and would not last a week, and so I waited for the inevitable.
One of the last people to be with him outside his family was Frank Kiehne, who had flown in from Guatemala to be there. His family had called Frank, now 86, who was visiting his son in the mountains of Guatemala. He called me last night and said it was sad to see Don the way he was. I thought to myself I did not want to see Don that way. His life had become a marker on my own journey through life, and I wanted only to remember him as he had been so many times throughout my life.
That is how I remember him now. Yes, Africa will miss him more than they can ever realize. So, too, will America, and so, too, will I.
Note: 'Dead' Friend Found - Addendum to Don Payne Remembrance by Stephen Hayes
Stephen Hayes is the president and CEO of The Corporate Council on Africa, an organization of nearly 200 US companies representing approximately eighty-five percent of US private investment in Africa.
