When Ben was eight years old, we moved from Minnesota to Tennessee. Ben was very glad to make the move to a bigger town (50,000). He entered the fourth grade and life seemed relatively normal. His little sister, Khendra, was now four years old and was beginning to share things with him. He started taking karate lessons and continued with his piano lessons.

Tennessee offered us a chance to homeschool Ben, and he enjoyed being homeschooled for sixth grade. Khendra was also homeschooled and the two of them became fast friends. Mom and dad were busy writing country music songs, trying to find success in Nashville. The house was filled with singing, guitar playing and piano playing. At nine, Ben entered the Tennessee State Piano competition and was a state winner. It was a happy and peaceful time. We also became quite interested in Elvis, football, nintendo games, and Pro Wrestling.

Ben started his seventh grade at home but began to miss the social life, so he enrolled in Middle School in the middle of the school year. About this same time he became frustrated with his piano teachers and stopped playing the piano. Girls, football, and now basketball, dominated his thoughts. We joined a local gym and started going regularly to play basketball, run on the track, and lift weights. Roy helped coach Ben's football team. In their second year, the team made it to the state final. Ben was named to the all-star team. He also entered a Nintendo contest and was District champion, and took second place in the city basketball shootout.

The football team had many black kids from the "Projects" on it. As a result of giving them rides, Roy became a "surrogate" father to many of them. After the football season ended, he and Ben began to spend a lot of time in the Projects, playing basketball, giving rides, buying meals. Most of Ben's friends deserted him at this time as he spent more and more time with his new black friends. Also, he now had to share his father with as many as 30 other boys his age. He did this without complaint, and one Christmas he and Khendra voluntarily gave up their Christmas money to help pay rent for one of the boy's mothers. He even went to some of the "all black" dances, wowing them all with his breakdancing, which he had learned from watching it on T.V. a couple times.

In ninth grade he fell in love for the first time. He mostly kept this to himself, for some unknown reason fearing we might think it was too early for him to have a girlfriend. But at the end of the year she moved away to another state. Ben was heartbroken. He was extremely frustrated that he could no longer see her. This frustation was the root of problems yet to come.