While he never did so consciously, dad was always stealing mom’s thunder.

While he drew laurels and praise for his amazing work as a city-wise reporter, mom worked the unheralded halls of the same cities: the classrooms.

As dad won awards from peers and the admiring, mom received the same plaudits, perhaps deeper. From the students who would visit her years later to the parents willing to do outlandish things at parent-teacher functions to land Mrs. Bowles as a teacher. One father offered to dive into a pool, fully clothed, if his child could become her student. He did, and the child was doubly rewarded, with doting parent and peerless teacher.

My guess is that student now runs her own company. And if you’re reading, could I get a grant?

And while dad’s tales made our Bowles kin legend, the truth is Bobbie Faye Johnson came from some badass heritage herself. Her mother, Daisy, was the only grandparent I knew. And it took me years to realize not every grandmother  rolls her own cigarettes, chews tobacco and carries a revolver is she ever gets into a scrape. Even in her 80’s, you didn’t fuck with Daisy.

Mom, too, doesn’t take much shit. Dad never took a vacation. But mom had summers off from class. So she’d pile me and sis, from tykehood to teen-hood, in a cramped VW Beetle to haul us to see relatives from both sides of the family.  She never lamented, at least publicly, having to shoulder that all herself. Though she does occasionally voice unsolicited  advice when you hold a knife: Don’t cut yourself. But as she’d say, it ain’t nagging if it’s true.

While dad willed his way onto his college basketball team, mom was recruited. Peabody College, a division of Vanderbilt University, offered a scholarship to the defensive guard known in hometown Chadbourn, N.C., as Mighty Mouse.

Like dad, she made little of everything she did. You’d no more knww dad was Pulitzer finalist than you’d know kids with names like Senator Scott and Precious Wellington III were singing mom to the high heavens. As Noah once noted, “When I think, I think of you.”

Amen, Noah. You’ve been taught well.