The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

The narration begins with the author as a young child. He is in serious trouble with his mother after being caught hitting his older sister. Moore remembers hearing his father defend him because “it wasn’t his style to yell” (6).

Moore’s first name, Westley, also belonged to his father. His two middle names were a compromise between his parents. His mother chose Omari, meaning “the highest,” while his father picked Watende, meaning “‘revenge will not be sought,’ a concept that aligned with his [father’s] gentle spirit” (6-7). Moore recalls, “Our house was on a busy street that sat right on the border of Maryland and Washington, DC, stuck confusingly between two different municipal jurisdictions, a fact that would become very significant in the near future” (7).

Moore provides important details regarding his mother’s and father’s history. His maternal grandfather dreamed of earning a theology degree from an American university. The family moved to New York City and settled in the Bronx. Wes’s mother, Joy, attended university in 1968 and became a passionate member of the Organization of African and African American Students at the American University, or OASATAU. Moore notes that the “battling organization elevated her consciousness beyond her assimilationist dreams and sparked a passion for justice and the good fight” (9). It was here that she met her first husband, the father of Moore’s older sister Nikki. Once he got swept up in the growing drug scene, he became abusive. Joy left him with Nikki and “vowed to never let another man put his hands on her. She wouldn’t tolerate it in others either” (10).

Moore’s memories of his father are faint. He remembers that he idolized him: “I tried to copy his walk, his expressions. I was his main man. He was my protector” (11). Moore’s dad was an only son with fervent dreams of becoming a TV reporter. He eventually hosted his own public affairs show and hired a writing assistant—Joy. They fell in love and were married, and Moore was born two years later. On April 15, 1982, Wes Moore Senior signed off his radio show and went home, not feeling well. In the morning he drove himself to the hospital; when Joy arrived, he was incoherent. The doctors numbed his throat, which left him unable to feel it closing. The next evening Moore’s father collapsed and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. They couldn’t save him. Moore hints that his father was not given proper and necessary care because of his appearance and address.

The narration then shifts to the parallel story of the other Wes Moore. Wes grew up in an area of West Baltimore that had “never fully recovered from the riots of the 1960s” (18). During this historically tragic time, his mother “Mary was only a kid, but she made a pact with herself at that moment: she would get her education and leave the neighborhood no matter what it took” (19). Her large family struggled in poverty, and she became pregnant at 16 years old. Her mother insisted that she continue school. After her mother died of kidney failure, Mary and her siblings went to live with her grandparents. The author notes, “Mary was the first of the kids to leave home. Education was her escape in more ways than one” (23).

Mary enrolled as an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University, the first in her family to attend college. Though she also worked part time as a unit secretary at a medical center while pursuing her studies, Wes’s childhood started well—until Mary learned she was losing access to Pell Grants. Without the grants, Mary could not afford to finish her degree, and so her part-time job became her permanent job. As for Wes’s father, he was an alcoholic. Wes barely knew him.