Finding Family — Our Ancestors Speak to Us
Circumstances can be a dividing mechanism when it comes to knowing your family. A few months ago, I dreamed about my great uncle, Samuel Lee Lester, who passed away on September 18, 1981. I was 17 at the time, and when we last saw one another, it was during a visit to the Veterans Hospital in East Orange, New Jersey. While visiting my great uncle, who had lived with my family until I turned four, it was a time for reflection and memories that we shared. As a child, I was always with him; everywhere he went, I tagged along because my mom was at work, and Uncle Sam would volunteer to keep me until she returned home.
During this dream, my uncle came to me and uttered these words. “Look at him”! “He is your kinfolk!” The impetus of the vision centered on a conversation between my childhood friend and Leander Knight, my teammate on the football team at East Orange High School during the late ‘70s’ and early 80s. Leander and I currently coach football at our alma mater. One day at practice, I asked him about the Lesters’ connection to his family and if they were from Cairo, Georgia. He responded that he was related to the Lesters through his cousin, who is married to one of them.
Growing up in East Orange, New Jersey, in the 1970s was an epic experience. Bob Lester coached the basketball team at East Orange High School. He was an iconic figure in our town, and everyone looked up to him. Watching many of the games was an incredible treat. The dominance, teamwork, and will to win were lessons embedded in the towns’ psyche. We all knew Coach Lester demanded excellence in the classroom and basketball court. Due to his incredible influence, his teams won multiple county and state championships during his tenure as head coach. In 1977, I was in junior high school, watching the East Orange basketball program demonstrate a dominance that New Jersey high school basketball had never seen.
I realized Lester was his surname and never considered a potential family connection. He left East Orange and moved to Atlantic City before my first year at East Orange High School. Even though he had moved on, his legacy left a lasting impression on those who never forgot him. Although children possess intelligence, connecting the dots can challenge their mindsets. I was no different in that respect, as academics and football consumed my daily routine throughout high school.
As I moved through those years, something innate caused me to continue following Coach Lester’s career. Even though I had never formally met him, his charismatic effect on his players and others was known. He attained role model status, and his influence had an immeasurable impact, so I became an educator and coach. Coaching and teaching are similar, and solid principles in the classroom and on the field of play can benefit the coach and student-athletes.
The social media era arrived, and in 2011, I came across Bob Lester’s name on one of its platforms and sent a friend request, to which he responded positively. Over the next ten years, we would view one another’s postings, rarely responding. Then, a dream about my great-uncle occurred. It was as perplexing a moment as I have ever experienced because my uncle said what I previously mentioned, and then he was gone. I often dream about my ancestors, and I had not dreamed about my Uncle Samuel in some years, so its sequence garnered my immediate attention.
The next day, I sent an inquiry message to Coach Lester, explicitly asking about his family and where they originated. After a few days, he said he did not know where his Lester family had come from, but his mom was from Mississippi. Bob went on to say that his grandparents had moved north during the great migration to Newark, New Jersey and that his mother met and married a man named Noah Lester, his father, and they had four boys; Bob was the youngest of them. Bob mentioned that his mother never spoke about Noah, whom she had divorced shortly after Bob’s birth. His father, Noah, died when he was three years old. Noah Lester was the brother of my great-uncle, Samuel.
There were nineteen children from Levi and Adaline Lester; one was my great-grandmother, Lessie. My maternal grandmother Catherine was Bob Lester’s first cousin, whom he never met. Since learning this in January of 2022, we have had multiple conversations on Zoom calls, and Bob, my mom, and my siblings have had the chance to meet and converse as a family. Finding my cousin has been a joyful experience for all of us. The greatest is witnessing him learning about his family and finding answers to questions he has had throughout his life. I am forever grateful for the relationship I shared with Uncle Samuel. For that very purpose, the creator saw fit to unite Bob with the Lester side of his family. The world is not that large after all.
Respectfully,
Terrence Knox, Ed. M.
My Cousin, Coach Robert “Bob” Lester, was inducted into the New Jersey State Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.
Our uncle, Samuel Lee Lester, served in the United States Army during World War II.
I am pictured here with the Class of 2008 Seniors at Paterson Catholic, where I served as an assistant coach. That team finished 10–0, winning the Parochial Group I State Championship.