Netta Walker Instagram – We buried my granddaddy on Monday.
Hayward “Pop” Bullard Jr
He was the reason I moved to Chicago, convincing my daddy that the only way I could become the woman he wanted me to be was if I left Jax and came to a city he knew would give me the fertilizer I needed to grow. Told my daddy I’d never come back, and not to cry when he said goodbye in front of my dorm because I would come back home if I saw. Every time he saw me after he’d sing Joe Williams “Going to Chicago”.
My daddy used to pick me up from school and we’d visit him when he was bootlegging around the corner. I’d sit on the back of his old ass baby blue Ford F-150 and watch he & my daddy play cards and drink with the old cats on the corner of Moncreif — while he gave me snacks and taught me how to cheat while shuffling a deck. How to shuffle good with the bridge and all. It’s one of my party tricks to this day.
He’s the reason why I went to my historically black middle and high school. He’s the reason I got my first cell phone. He taught me how to fish. He’s the reason I understood what the measure of a man was and why James Weldon Johnson should be my favorite author. Why I know about axe handle Saturday and the boomerangs. Why I know my hometowns real history. Why I know what it means to love your family.
Daddy & Pop talked on the phone every night till my daddy died. About everything and nothing at all, from 9pm till 1 or 2 am every night my entire life. I saw how much Grandaddy meant to my dad and wanted to be able to talk to my daddy like that too. And because of that I haven’t had a best friend like my father since (or even before) he passed. Pop would always tell me and my brothers just how much like my daddy we were, and not to trip too much over the same mistakes Tony Walker made. To be smarter, because it wasn’t gone be too hard. Pop was the blueprint.
I named my first published play after him because he was the man that shaped the man that shaped me. He taught me patience, love, and softness. Joy. He was the ultimate, the truth. Without Hayward Bullard I wouldn’t be who I am today.
I love you so much, Pop.
Excited for the day I get to see you and daddy talking shit together again. | Posted on 02/Oct/2025 01:32:21
