A high school classmate forwarded me a Facebook post of a guy named Roy Sova:
“How the world has changed. Talking with a co-worker at WBNG-TV in Binghamton [NY], we got on the subject of McKinley Green, or ‘Mac,’ as everybody called him.” Channel 12 was WNBF-TV, the CBS affiliate, when I was growing up.
As my classmate well knew, Mac was my paternal grandfather. Well, technically, my step-grandfather. This is a fact my sisters and I learned pretty early on. I don’t recall HOW we were told, let alone WHY, but it was out there.
My father’s biological dad was the infamous Raymond Cone, who died in 1947, before I was born, and who I couldn’t name until 2019. Clarence Williams, my mom’s dad, was not in my life and seldom in my mother’s, though I attended his 1958 funeral; I was five.
So, Mac was my only REAL grandfather, taking me to Triplets minor league baseball games, especially when my father was working nights at IBM for about six years in the 1960s. Here’s something I wrote back in 2005.
An interesting perspective
Roy Sova posted: “Mac was in his mid-70s when I knew him, which would have been around the early 1970s. [That tracks; he was likely born in 1896.] He was the maintenance guy at the TV station, and although his eyesight was failing, he was on our bowling team. [And according to Roy, Mac was a better bowler than he was.] The TV station told him he had a job there as long as he wanted it.” [I had heard that elsewhere.]
“His father was born in Maryland in 1848 and had been a slave”. [This I cannot verify; I thought his father was born in 1862, though in Maryland, but maybe I discovered the wrong John Green.]
“Mac was very old school. He always called me Mr Sova. One day, I asked him to please call me Roy. He was about 50 years older than me. As he continued to call me Mr Sova, I again asked him to call me Roy, or I was going to start calling him Mr Green. I’ll never forget his response.
“This is paraphrased, but pretty much what he said. ‘If you call me Mr Green, it will hurt me. I was brought up to call my betters Mister.’ I never felt I was Mac’s better, and after that, barely his equal. But from that day forward, I was Mr. Sova, and he was Mac.” Roy notes that he was probably a news reporter and a weekend news anchor.
When I first read it, it weirded me out a bit. But it did track consistently with who Mac was.
An unexplored line
So the 1848 date is possible. I never spent much time talking to Mac, whom we called Pop, about his birth family. I’d met his brothers a handful of times. My father’s relationship with Mac was… complicated. Still, Mac adopted (the term they used) him in September 1944, about 3 weeks before my dad turned 18. (Dad’s mom/Pop’s wife since 1931 was still his mom.)
Roy Sova: “Yes, your dad’s relationship with Mac was a little strained. Mac was content to live as in the past, your dad wanted change. I interviewed [Les] several times about his work with the Urban League. [Actually, the Interracial Center that eventually became the Urban League at 45 Carroll Street.] Mac was a great guy. Liked and respected by everyone at the radio and TV stations. “
I may talk with Roy Sova again — someone who knew Les and Mac separately, which is fascinating to me.
