What John Amos taught me about having — and being — a father

John Amos in 2007. Nick Ut/AP hide caption toggle caption Nick Ut/AP John Amos taught me what it was like to grow up with a father in the house – and to be one. That’s because Amos – who died in August at the age of 84, though his death wasn’t disclosed publicly until Tuesday – first came to my attention playing righteous dad James Evans, Sr. on the legendary 1970s sitcom Good Times. As a young, Black boy growing up in a home without my father in Gary, Ind., the best window I had into what it might be like to have a concerned, powerful, ethical male in the house was seeing how James Sr. worked with Esther Rolle’s Florida Evans to keep their kids on track. It didn’t hurt that this new kind of TV family lived in what appeared to be Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project, about 40 miles northwest of Gary. Good Times presented the first network TV sitcom centered on a two-parent, Black family – in fact, Rolle herself had initially insisted that Good Times’ family have a father – and it me...