Lonnie first met Danny's little brother when the boy's mother asked him to talk to her sons about the direction they were heading. "He was just a shorty then, a wannabe," Lonnie recalls. "The next time I saw him, they were leading him across the Lookout campus in shackles. A real hard-core kid." But over the next few years, he saw something else in Danny's little brother: a desire to make something of himself. So after the young man got through the Amer-I-Can program, Lonnie gave him a job teaching. A second chance. Which, Danny's little brother says, is more than the police ever gave him.
"They knew I was a gang member when I was thirteen...that I was over my head. But never once did they show that they knew I was having a difficult time getting to school. Never once did they offer a ride so I wouldn't have to be afraid. They just wanted to wait until me and my brother got older so they could arrest us.
"Lonnie gave me a job when I'd never had one before. He showed me another way."
And he's come a long way from there. "He's working two jobs," Lonnie says. "He's going to college. He's a single parent taking care of a little girl."
But make no mistake, Danny's little brother adds, "I am not a 'former' gang member. When I talk to kids, I try to point out that the decisions you make when you are young will be part of you for the rest of your life.
"I can't go to a mall with my daughter without lookin' over my shoulder. I can't go to a concert without five or six other guys. I can't take my girlfriend out without carrying a weapon. You can't just walk away once you made the wrong decision. I see some dude who shot at me on the street, he thinks he's out of it, but he don't know what I'm thinking. I'm remembering that they shot at me...and they're not safe."
He looks again at the photograph of Peanut, a childhood friend, and looks away. There is no picture of his brother Danny, on the run and accused of participating in the rape and murder of Brandy Duvall, as well as of orchestrating the hit that led to the shooting of Venus Montoya last summer.
This past April, Lonnie went to visit his son in Chicago. Rashied had come under fire from other rappers, who said one of his songs accused them of taking rap into the sewer, and Louis Farrakhan had called a meeting to bring about a truce.
While Rashied took a shower, Lonnie listened to the "beats" of a song for which his son was still writing the lyrics. As he listened, Lonnie began to sing: The growth and education of Lonnie Lynn. The growth and education of Lonnie Lynn.
"He came out saying, 'What's that, Pops? What was that you said?'"
Soon after, Rashied recorded the song "G.O.D. (Gaining One's Definition)." "The education of Lonnie Lynn began, began with time" it starts out, and it concludes with this chorus: "I've lived, I've learned. I've taken, I've earned. I have laughed. I have cried. I've failed and I have tried. Sunshine. Pouring rain. I've found joy through my pain....I just want to be happy, being me."
The interior of Lonnie's house is almost a Lynn museum, filled with memorabilia ranging from posters for Rashied's albums to the photograph of his grandparents to souvenirs from his basketball days, including a picture of him in a Rockets uniform, next to one of his buddy Spencer Haywood. They've been in touch a lot lately about the thirtieth anniversary ABA reunion coming up in Indianapolis later this month. "I've been getting calls from people I haven't talked to for nearly thirty years," Lonnie says. "They're tellin' me to bring my memorabilia so I can sell it. But I ain't destitute ... that stuff's Malone's."
On the garage out back of Lonnie's house hangs a dilapidated old peach basket with the bottom knocked out of it. It's a reminder of where he came from and what is owed to the past. "All old players ought to have one," he says. "I got a bunch more in the garage, just in case."
The garden by the garage is overgrown. He tried to keep up with it, but it was Val's project. "She would have had it perfect," Lonnie says. "I still find it hard that she won't be coming home. That she won't be here to share a laugh or a story when we get old together. But if I learned anything from her, it was change what you can and get on with the rest."
Before she died, Val asked that their son be allowed to get to know her folks in West Virginia, so that's where Malone spends the school year in the company of cousins and grandparents. Lonnie will miss Malone, but while he's gone he'll put his energies into building the Amer-I-Can program back up. The more Amer-I-Can programs there are, the safer his sons, "all of my sons--black, brown and white," will be.
Lonnie spots Malone on the front porch. "Hey," he says, "why do you do the right thing?"
Malone looks up and smiles. "Because it's the right thing to do."
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