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Telling of Life Story Enlivens Mfume's Campaign
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"I gave new meaning to the phrase 'sowing wild oats,' " he wrote in his 1996 autobiography, "No Free Ride."
This period, in later years, would serve as the low point of The Story: the depth of despair just before his street corner epiphany. But even in that time, friend Carlitta Coates said, she saw a spark.
She said Mfume would bring a Polaroid camera and an improvised photo backdrop to the Crystal Ballroom club and charge clubgoers for instant portraits.
"His hustle of taking pictures -- that's what singled him out from the rest," said Coates, who gave birth to Mfume's son Michael in 1970. "He wanted more, and I could tell that."
Then, in 1972, came the acknowledged turnaround point in his life, the night when the golden cloud found him at the craps game.
"It's the one thing I think about every day," Mfume, 57, said in a recent interview, sitting behind a desk at his Baltimore campaign office a little more than a mile from the spot where it happened. "It's what saved my life."
Other people have opinions on how Frizzell Gray righted his life. Maybe it was the need to set an example for his kids. Maybe it was the influence of adults in his life. Maybe the desire to do good was in him all along.
Mfume's version is now, as it has been for years, that he had a Saul-going-to-Damascus moment at Laurens and Division streets.
"He said something had come over him, and he just felt like he had to turn his life around," his sister LaWana Gray said. "We were like, 'What do you mean, something came over [you]?' He said he couldn't explain."
A 'Conquering Son'
After that moment, Mfume said, his new self needed a new name. A relative who was traveling to Africa brought back words from a language in Ghana that she said meant "conquering son of kings."
Frizzell was angry. He had asked for names , choices, but she had just one, written on a brown paper bag. "Kwah-EE-see Oom-FOO-May."
"The only question I could get out was, 'Is this it?' You know, 'Are there others?' " Mfume recalled. After a while, though, he said, it began to feel comfortable.
