By Rabbi Ben Kamin
ENCINITAS, California –Every once in a while you run into someone you’ve never seen before who winds up making a home in your soul. Days after the encounter, when you are situated comfortably in your home, it becomes clear that you will likely never see that person again. A gaping distance, in both geography and life-experience, undeniably separate you from him.
I really don’t know that much about Xavier Lafayette Fox except that I like him immeasurably. I cannot let go of my fleeting moment of total comfort and joyfulness with him. This is even more so because during the brief interlude, I even had the unexpected opportunity to defend him. I found myself feeling outrage when I heard another person, his co-worker who is also black, denigrate him. More on that below.
“My name is Xavier Lafayette Fox,” he told me, declaratively, proudly—grinning at the irony of such a regular, waged man carrying the moniker of a nobleman or member of some exotic parliament. Xavier is an upbeat fixture around the reception area of the Sheraton Hotel near the Roanoke, Va. Regional Airport.
Outfitted immaculately in a blazer, tie, cotton white dress shirt and pressed blue slacks, a twinkle in his eye, he answers the telephone, checks people’s luggage, and, as I learned, drives the shuttle vehicle as needed by patrons of the lodge. He’s an older service-oriented man, not servile however, wizened by time and social change and the barely invisible scars of racial bruises carried from a time not that long ago in his native Virginia.
I met Xavier, whom most of his working colleagues affectionately dub “The Mayor of the Sheraton,” this past MLK Holiday while lecturing at Roanoke College.
His sense of humor and his magic with people and his contagious love of life have outlived Jim Crow and the Klan and the time when, as he put it, “Never would have dreamed that I’d see one of our brothers in the White House.” He remembers being banned from WHITE ONLY bathrooms, from the front section of city buses, and he recalls being handed used, worn-out textbooks in segregated, heatless grade schools that had been discarded by white students on the other side of town.
The night before I checked out, when asking for a one-hour extension on my room for the next day, Xavier was at the front desk and enthusiastically declared “It’s done!” He shouted out my room number and the time requested to the other receptionist, who nodded. That was just after Xavier, smiling with glee and goodwill, told me: “If you go into the bar and tell them that Xavier Lafayette Fox sent you, you will immediately receive a free glass of water!”
When he drove me to a nearby Walgreen’s the next morning, he regaled me with stories of his life in the Blue Ridge Mountains, of the fascinating people he’s met, and of how he believes that America is a better place than it once was. His optimism and cheer touched me and I realized how the struggles of my own life were a matter of relative unimportance compared to this anonymous icon.
That morning, as I worked at my room desk, I was interrupted twice by an impatient maid wanting to know when I was checking out. I explained about my extension. Then the phone rang: a downstairs manager was also inquiring about it. I told her: “Xavier gave an extension and I keep getting called on it.” The woman, black, arrogant, and a little too young, growled at me.
“Xavier is just the van driver, sir. I am a front-desk agent.”
“Let me come down and talk to you,” I replied.
Xavier: your younger colleague is going to be voting to reelect you as Mayor.
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Kamin is an author and freelance writer. Your comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent directly to ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com