A Beautiful Mind

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

About February 1, 1936, a family man married with seven young children began to hear voices. Think mathematics professor John Nash, Jr. A Beautiful Mind The Dad began to hear voices about the house and outside the house. He was always eccentric, if not out there. Recently, his dentist had removed all of the man’s teeth during one appointment. It seemed like an efficient thing to do in the moment. His wife would years later lament with her grandson that she should have stopped her husband, talked him out of it.

Her husband began to talk non-sense. The voices continued. Seven young children and he no longer took any interest in his surroundings, including his 18-month old son. He wondered around the house. He could no longer sleep. He was now beyond eccentric as he entered a state of silliness and suspicion. His wife was terrified as her husband’s mind slipped away.

On February 17, 1936, the man was adjudged insane and committed to Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia. He lost consciousness the next day and passed away on February 20, 1936.

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If there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million life stories, experiences and perspectives. It occurred to me that I have an inability to accept dogma and slogan words. My mind lacks the Theory of the Mind to take race narratives at face value. The easy explanation is that I grew up in a white adjacent place and time, that my ancestors had a clue about how to make it in the world regardless of prejudice and bigotry. That sentence may come across as harsh, but it is genuine and supports my Theory of the Mind supposition. I will write what I think as I value authenticity before social conformity.

We are going to dig deep this lovely Sunday morning as you can already see.

Suppose my non-conformity on race does not derive from my suburban classmates and family experiences on Twyman Road, Irvington Street and Jean Drive in the 1960s and 1970s? Suppose, just suppose, how I perceive the world reflects how my mind is engineered?

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Consider my Grandma’s Grandfather and the founding father of my family, Daniel Brown (1833 - 1885). I never knew my ancestor and nor did my Grandma as she was born in 1897.

However, circumstantial evidence suggests Daniel Brown’s mind was different. I mean, what explains a former slave who buys a former Randolph mansion house on the James River? Normal and conforming former slaves probably would have talked themselves out of such a lofty aim. Did my ancestor lack a theory of the mind expected of former slaves? Was he free of the burden of the theory of the mind, so he was able to see opportunity in a raceless way? In other words, did my ancestor lack a race consciousness switch in the 1870s which I lack in the 2020s? And might the lack of a race consciousness switch be inheritable?

Daniel Brown acquired hundreds of acres of land from former Confederate soldiers. Like what kind of mind does that ten miles from the White House of the Confederacy in the 1870s? This is a supposition but I suspect Daniel had a different kind of mind from birth. His mind lacked the ability to internalize the prejudice and bigotry of the outside world. As a result, his beautiful non-conforming mind proved a blessing in his place and time and for his descendants.

This is my theory, that genetic mind construction explains how a former slave leveraged a beautiful, non-conforming mind to acquire hundreds of acres of land and to found a family church in 1871 that survives to this day. Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church Richmond, Virginia

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Like mathematics professor John Nash, Jr. in the film A Beautiful Mind, great ability in mathematics is no protection from schizophrenia. It is a tragedy of the mind that great ability oftentimes ushers in a disconnection from reality. Professor Nash was blessed with incredible mathematical acumen. “In 1994, Nash is awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his revolutionary work on game theory, and is honored by his fellow professors.” And at the same time, Professor Nash heard voices and was led to believe in conspiracies. Brilliant but asocial.

My Aunt Amy Wilson was a great grand daughter of Daniel Brown. And like her non-conforming ancestor, Aunt Amy had a non-conforming mind. She was born with the acumen of Professor Nash at Princeton University. Black people in Chesterfield County, Virginia understood Aunt Amy was an outlier in mathematics. She was advanced two or three grades in public school. For fun, she would challenge the equations and formulas in her assigned math books. “Math genius” was the word my neighbor Wallace Lewis used to describe Aunt Amy a few years ago.

Aunt Amy was shipped off to college in New York City to make her way in the larger world. This would have been the 1950s. Sadly, Aunt Amy’s mind began to break down as she developed schizophrenia like Professor Nash. Aunt Amy was committed to Central State Hospital and eventually released. Her high promise in mathematics was gone but I remember Aunt Amy as a quirky aunt who lived in the attic of Grandma’s house. How stereotypical, right? The crazy aunt in the attic.

I love non-conformers and quirky types. Whenever I stopped by Grandma’s house as an adult, I made sure to visit Aunt Amy who weaved in and out of delusion with finesse. She was also very modest. I never knew from Aunt Amy that she was a math genius. I would hear this from Dad and my neighbor Wallace Lewis years later.

The Aunt Amy I knew was a fun and non-conforming woman who dressed like a bohemian from Greenwich Village. Never would I have learned her mathematics background or her commitment to Central State from Aunt Amy.

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My Beloved Cousin once said we Twymans were dysfunctional. That was an overly harsh assessment. Beloved Cousin is prone to drama, like me and my daughter. But it is true we Twymans and Browns did not present as conforming people. We were a quirky bunch over the generations and the quirky edge we all brought to life begged the question whether something genetic was going on.

At a family reunion in 2005, the wife of a second cousin was in a truth-telling mood. She said the chief attribute about my family was one word — stubbornness. I knew what she meant. I am stubborn. My sister was stubborn to her detriment. My Dad is a stubborn introvert. My uncles were stubborn. I could see the pattern. Note that the wife of a second cousin did not say the defining trait of my family was oppression/sigh! She said, stubbornness. I think that trait is heritable. “A study from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig found that one-third of all people have a mutated gene that makes them bull-headed. So if you’re stubborn, you can credit your genetics for this one.”

Was Grandma’s Grandfather a stubborn man? I am going to go out on a limb and conclude Daniel Brown was a stubborn man on the spectrum. Daniel had a genetic advantage that enabled him to play the game of chess, the game of life. He was free of the burden of looking at himself as prejudiced and bigoted whites may have looked at him and his large growing family in the 1870s.

He lacked a theory of the mind.

Once while hiking on Mount Charleston outside of Las Vegas, my cousin Bob and I got to talking about Twyman Road. Bob had grown up at the end of Twyman Road. Stubborn, he chose to attend all-black schools during Freedom of Choice unlike his brother, Bruce, who was one of the first three black students to attend Meadowbrook High School in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

Bob had traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada. He shared that Twymans were not like other black people in his experience. We were different which lined up with my experience in the larger world. At the time, I did not put two and two together. Now I can connect the dots. Might it be that a genetic thread of a non-conforming mind made us eccentric and quirky compared to other black people Bob had come across in his travels? There might be something to that idea.

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Here is another piece of evidence in support of my Beautiful Mind thesis — one of my uncles had only one talent in life, real estate. That was it. He was not social. He was not hip at social clues. He was stubborn, so stubborn that he thought he would live forever so he did not prepare a will for his holdings. My uncle was different among a cast of quirky brothers and sisters, one sister being the math genius turned schizophrenic and another sister who would sit in the same pew at church and be the first to leave church service for her entire life. Hints of a spectrum existence….

Anyway, my uncle was dating a woman down in Norfolk, Virginia. My uncle wanted to impress the woman, so he invited her out to the fanciest restaurant in Norfolk. The lady was suitably pleased and accepted the dinner invitation. This dinner was a big deal by the way. My uncle never spent a dime he did not have to spend. He wore rumpled clothes, drove old cars, stayed at the cheapest hotel in inner-city Boston he could find when he attended my law school graduation and ate peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

The big day for dinner arrived!

As was his routine, my Uncle prepared himself a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. He washed his hands, picked up his date, and drove to the fancy dandy restaurant. There was a spectacular view of the harbor. The waiter brought over menus for my uncle and his date. When it came time to order, the date ordered from the menu. The waiter turned to my uncle and asked for his order. My uncle replied, he had already eaten a peanut butter sandwich for dinner at home.

That was my uncle. That was normal behavior among my Twyman uncles and aunts. Those were my people by blood/smile. (I hasten to add my maternal uncles and aunts were conforming. One would not find quirky behavior among my 11 Womack uncles and 2 Womack aunts.)

I have a cousin who has autism. She loves learning about actors and actresses. She is an expert in these matters. She also will never be able to live as an independent adult. Her granddad was Mr. Peanut Butter Sandwich Man. And her distant ancestor is Daniel Brown. Like my cousin, I was soothed by routine and focused deep interest. When I was seven and eight years old, I would bore my Grandma by reciting all of the U.S. Presidents in order, repeatedly. Bless you Grandma for listening to me.

My Grandma heard voices around the house but she had dementia at the time. Fortunately, my Dad doesn’t hear voices. He just thinks I have died and needs to hear my voice every now and then.

Conclusion: Now do you see why Blackness as the be all and end all doesn’t line up with my young experience of family? Sure, there was prejudice and bigotry in the larger world. But at Grandma’s house on Terminal Avenue and on Twyman Road, I was surrounded by beautiful minds. Beautiful non-conforming minds could be a blessing. Daniel Brown could not have left a legacy of acreage and a family church and sense of self if his mind conformed. He was like my Mom who never saw a Negro in the mirror and thought she must live a certain way.

The Beautiful Mind was also a curse in my family. My Grandma used to keep a picture of her late husband, my grandfather, on her dining room table. I was probably eight years old. Grandma would tell me over and over that Granddad, eccentric and quirky, had all of his teeth pulled out at once and he died of blood loss. Bless Grandma and the story of great tragedy I inherited. I was quirky like my Grandfather.

In full truth, Grandma never told innocent me the rest of the story. The man who lost his Beautiful Mind in the first paragraph of this essay was my Grandfather.

Are you curious what my Twyman people were like in the 1960s and 1970s? We were a different sort. View this video below. Remove the over sided eyeglasses. Change the race from white to Brown-skinned uncles and aunts. Observe their faces and how the two interact. These are the mannerisms and facial antics and zaniness of my beloved uncles, aunts and beloved cousin. We were all on the spectrum more or less.

Good Morning!