You can diagnose the health of a society by the type of men it chooses to celebrate — and America suffers from a chronic illness.
We are infatuated with paying tribute to incredibly flawed men who serve a momentary political purpose, rather than admiring honorable men who consistently sacrifice for others.
In the dystopian nightmare year of 2020, the reaction to George Floyd’s May 25 death drowned out another tragedy that occurred the same month, one that left a family without a father and a community with one less man who led by example.
Calvin “Duper” Munerlyn, 43 at the time of his death, a loving husband and father of eight children, was tragically murdered in an altercation while working as a security guard at a Family Dollar store in Flint, Mich.
At the height of the pandemic restrictions, Munerlyn was tasked to require everyone entering the store to wear a mask. That sparked an argument with would-be customer Sharmel Teague.
Twenty minutes later, her husband Larry Teague and her son Ramonyea Bishop came to the store, where they shot and killed Munerlyn.
In November 2022, all three were convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and sentenced to life without parole.
Justice was served, but five years later Munerlyn’s family and community are still suffering the loss of a man they loved dearly.
“It’s really been five whole years without my love. I haven’t been right since they took him from us,” his wife Latryna Sims posted online last month. “I never imagined my life without him and to be forced to live without him is insane.”
“That man was a legend out here, from troubled teenagers that he helped to taking care of his babies, his wife, his home,” Latryna told a local newspaper in 2020. “That man was just lovable.”
“He loved taking his kids out, having fun, basketball, bike rides, exercising, jogging,” Bernadett Munerlyn, Calvin’s mother, said. “He just was a beautiful father and it’s devastating that he’s gone.”
“I’m going to try and live for him,” said Demonte Munerlyn, Calvin’s eldest son.
His children’s school named Munerlyn “Parent of the Year” a few days before his death.
“When we need something, we are going to call ‘Duper,’” said Christel Drew, the school’s principal. “When we need somebody to do security at graduation . . . fundraisers, whatever it is that we need, Mr. Munerlyn was there for the kids.”
His warmth and care touched many at his workplace and in the wider Flint community.
“If he didn’t catch me at the door, he’d find me down my aisle, stop, come up to me, shake my hand and pull me in for a big hug,” wrote Ricardo Medina, a Family Dollar deliveryman. “He was the example for all young men trying to raise a family.”
“The type of guy who pushes you to your limits to succeed simply cause he knows that deep down you have so much more to give,” wrote Nate Sanders, who Munerlyn mentored at a local community center.
You can tell the greatness of a man by the emptiness he leaves behind when he’s taken from us.
But there are no statues of Calvin Munerlyn to honor and remember him, no city squares named for him — only memories in the minds of those who knew him personally.
Our society’s sickness prevents us from cherishing the lives of great fathers who teach us how to become our better selves.
Instead, we seize on the blood of momentary martyrs, altering their stories for political purposes, without seeing such sickness as a symptom of an internally damaged society.
Good fathers like Calvin Munerlyn are the antidote to America’s ills — but profit-driven activists fill our hearts with paranoiac rage, injecting us with artificial narratives that stunt any healing.
We are told that fathers are optional, that their masculinity is toxic.
We highlight tales of terrible fathers, projecting them as typical, to rationalize making fatherhood unnecessary if a family unit can financially afford his absence.
Clearly, Munerlyn meant more to his wife and children than a paycheck. You can’t buy that kind of adoration and respect.
Yet in our society, the law-abiding father figure is not nearly as memorable as a criminal who died in an ambiguous way.
The demand to manufacture racial tensions overshadowed the loss of a great man in an economically challenged Midwestern city.
This Father’s Day, we should pay homage to a father and husband who will never have a street named after him — but who provided something more substantial than a crumbling road ever could.
Rest in peace, Calvin “Duper” Munerlyn.
Adam B. Coleman is the author of “The Children We Left Behind” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing.
