Kevon Smith Sr was at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Ohio with his son, sitting at a table away from the few other patrons there that morning. In his private corner of the place, the father thought he was out of sight until he found a note on his car from a couple who had seen everything and weren’t shy about what they witnessed.
During the course of his breakfast, Kevon Smith thought that he saw the couple looking in his direction on occasion but passed it off and went about what he was there to do, which was more than just grabbing a meal. The father was there alone with his baby boy, and when he went out to the car, he learned that “the Masons” had a little piece of advice for this father.
“I noticed this older couple over in the corner,” Kevon told WOIO. “They kept smiling at me, and I was looking at my son like — what is going on?” He figured it out after what they left with the strange green note on his windshield, letting him know how unusual he is based on what they saw.
“Today your meal is on my wife and me,” the note said in part, referring to the cash they left to reimburse him for the breakfast he just paid for that they watched him eat while sweetly interacting with his baby boy. They decided to go out of their way for this guy as a thank you for being a good father.
“We need more black dads like you.” The short note closed with these older parents urging Kevon to “Enjoy that baby boy as long as God intends.”
Rather than taking offense to the “black dad” comment, Kevon Smith completely agreed that it’s an issue, having experienced it for himself. He explained that because he didn’t have a father figure growing up, he wanted to do things differently and give his child all of his love and attention all of the time.
What he was doing in the restaurant that morning proved how important that is to him, and he even acknowledged that “there’s a lot of guys I know that aren’t taking care of their kids.”
“Not all of us are out here being gang bangers, some of us are out here being fathers,” the proud dad told the news station. Kevon Smith is proof that blaming poverty and being raised by a single parent is just an excuse for bad behavior as adults since that was his upbringing, which he learned from, rather than repeated.
To be a good person is a choice, and Kevon and others out there like him are who deserve the attention — not the ones who took the wrong path and are bringing people down with them. Kevon proved that again with his closing thought. “I’m definitely going to make sure I’m paying it forward,” he said. “I get blessed. I want to bless someone else.”
