Wilfred Coggins
Autobiographical Reflection
People will call me
Bill, Wil or Willie
Each name has a connection,
A History…
My name is Wilfred Coggins
I am Gil Coggins younger and only brother who, like Gil, was born, raised and acculturated in New York’s famed but contained, black restrictive GHETTO — Harlem.
Fortunately “Moms” Coggins decided to return to her father’s home in Barbados to escape the unrelenting, day after day hardships, stresses and poverty characteristic of the urban American economic depression and post-depression era. She also wanted to help her deceased sister’s children, Eunice and Roy, who lived with her father. Before I was five years old I was a little passenger on a big ship sailing from, crowded, busy, fast New York City to a small mostly rural island in the Caribbean Sea.
“Moms” decision to return to Barbados proved to be very fortunate for my future life. After returning to Harlem in June 1933, based on the solid education I received in Barbados, I skipped grades in the both elementary and junior high schools. Despite external “street life” distractions, I maintained my interest in school. Consequently, I graduated from CCNy as a psychology major in 1949, and after being in the army (1950-1952) I earned my masters of social work (psychiatric) from U.C.L.A in 1955. After working primarily in out-patient psychiatric clinics for ten years, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1965 to study and work at the world renowned Tavistock Clinic in London.
As I look back and remember how I moved along the road of life, I can see, sense an, sometimes, clearly feel the influence of the many mentors who have helped me to build my life.
My first, most crucial, and most enduring mentor and role model was my mother. She was an intelligent, enterprising, very hardworking, West Indian immigrant from Barbados. She grew up on this island which is 14 miles wide and 22 miles long. It was a British colony with a very disciplined but autocratic school system that produced very literate students. The school’s headmaster was “King”. The parents dared not challenge him.
Likewise, my mother’s father, Gift, was a very strict authoritarian man who was not challenged by his children or employees. He owned land and a stone quarry. He sold the stones used as the foundation for the traditional Barbadian chattel houses. He did tell my mother, “Own a piece of land, and you will own a piece of the world.”
While I still was a child, and a very introspective, observing “family detective” – I noted similarity between my name, Wilfred, and my mother’s name, Winifred. I sensed that this connection meant much was expected of me. The youngest of two brothers, i became the good, reliable student at school, and the responsible caretaker of the apartment, while my mother was at work.
Although I was exposed to the sometimes risky and dangerous, but also stimulating and enriching streets of Harlem, I retreated to the world of books in my tenement cave in the sky. But after a fight with Mike, who had a big street “Rep” I earned my own “Rep”. The rap on the street wire was, “Mike Turner got beat by a guy who reads books.”
My mother was a tough, demanding and critical person, but she was also loving, helpful and very, very caring. Throughout her life, she habitually helped and supported someone. She was a domestic worker who persevered. As a poor, single parent living in a segregated Harlem from the twenties to the fifties, she faced many barriers. She penetrated and overcame many of these barriers. Eventually, she proudly owned her own piece of the world – a brownstone building in Brooklyn.
My mother successfully encouraged and nagged me to attend college. My “Rep” gave me a pass so that I could safely walk or jog from 157th and St. Nicholas Avenue to City College of New York located at 137th Street and Convent.
My brother, Gil Coggins started playing the piano at seven, and he showed an affinity and passion for music immediately. His persevering, relentless, repetitive, totally self-absorbed practicing on the piano, annoyed me greatly most of my life. I felt that my brother was not much of a mentor to me. In retrospect, however, I realize he gave me access to and appreciation of the culture of jazz musicians that led to a deep, perhaps innate love of music. He also modeled for me the role discipline, practice and process play in one’s work performance and in achieving one’s objective. What life lesson! Thank you Gil.
-Wilfred D. Coggins 12-4-2018