Tom Archdeacon: Libyan Little League benefactor has a ‘real good heart’

Long ago, he got Hawaii and Ohio mixed up and because of it there are a lot of people here today — from the Rev. Gerard Seldon, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church on Hoover Ave. to the teenage kid who hustles candy along Brown Street and the customers who line up daily for the bourbon chicken at the Bourbon Street Grill & Cafe on Brown Street and now, especially, the young ballplayers in the First Dayton Little League program in West Dayton — who are thankful Hassan Abdalla once thought “Aloha” and “O-HI-O” were the same.

Abdalla grew up on a farm five kilometers outside of Benghazi, Libya. He had 13 brothers and sisters and when he finished high school in 1979, he faced the same dilemma the nation’s other 18-year-old boys did under the despotic rule of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

“With the Gaddafi regime you found your name on one of two lists,” he said. “You go to college or the Air Force Academy.

“I was being sent to the Air Force to learn to fly fighter jets. That’s when I came to my dad and said, ‘This guy is crazy! I’d love to fly, but with Gaddafi we’re eventually going to go bomb somebody. A neighbor.’ And that’s just what happened.

“I told my dad, ‘I want to leave! I have some friends in the United States.’ And even though it was in the middle of the harvest season, he said ‘Go.’ ”

Abdalla said back then Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware recruited Libyan students so he figured he’d go there. Never mind that he spoke almost no English, had never been on an airplane and in his rush had learned nothing about where he was headed.

“This is funny now,” Abdalla said with a laugh and a shake of the head. “When I was in Italy getting my visa and my friend mentioned Ohio, I thought, ‘That sounds like Hawaii.’

“We used to watch Hawaii Five-O, so I loved Hawaii.

“But then I fly into New York and on to Columbus and my friend picks me up and we start driving. I’m not seeing no palm trees, no beach, nothing like that. All I’m seeing are farms and tractors and fields of corn. It looks like where I lived back home, so I turn to him and say, ‘Where’s the beach?’

“He said, ‘What are you talking about? We don’t have a beach.’ ”

“And I said, ‘Well, where is Hawaii?’

“He goes, ‘That’s a 9 or 10-hour flight away!’ ”

And once Abdalla got to Ohio Wesleyan with his transcript of grades, he found out he wouldn’t be starting classes there either.

“I was missing American history and American government,” he said. “I had to finish high school, so I came to Dayton. My dad’s friend, his son was going to Fairmont East. So I went, too. There were four of us from Libya — I think we were about the only foreign kids in the school — but it was a beautiful atmosphere. Everybody was fantastic.”

After high school, he made his way up the employment ladder in Dayton, first parking cars at the Daytonian Hilton, then working at the famed L’Auberge restaurant. Eventually he manned his own food stand at Courthouse Square, then at the Turtle Creek flea market and soon at festivals across the Miami Valley, around Ohio and into neighboring states.

He opened a restaurant at the Fairfield Mall and later in downtown Dayton and those gave birth to his Bourbon Street Grill & Cafe at the corner of Brown and Ashley streets.

“When I came to the States in ’79, I needed a job and somebody gave me a job,” he said. “When I started my own business, people gave me a hand and many were kind to me.

“Now it’s my turn.”

He was looking for a cause when a friend suggested the First Dayton Little League (FDLL) program in West Dayton.

FDLL began 70 years ago and although it has some notable alumni — from M.C. “Mickey” McGuire, who ended up playing parts of two seasons in the 1960s with the Baltimore Orioles, to guys like Keith Byars, Martin Bayless and Jeff Graham, all of whom played in the NFL, and former Ohio State basketball standout Jamie Skelton — the program has struggled to find enough finances and volunteers in recent years.

Its four-field complex sits on 19 acres along Crown Ave. just off W. Second Street. Just keeping a place like that mowed — especially when your program has no lawn equipment — is a herculean task and the fields often were overgrown for the 10 teams and 150 kids who call the place their home this summer

“The kids need to feel proud that their park looks just as nice as the ones they go to in Kettering or Huber Heights,” Abdalla said. “But that’s not easy.

“There’s nothing worse than when people are there holding onto the line and no one is there to give them a hand. They eventually get tired and let go. Volunteers get tired, coaches get tired. So it’s up to the rest of us to help out. But isn’t that what we all should be doing anyway?”

After seeing the untrimmed fields, Abdalla, who lives in Kettering with his family, went to Heil Brothers Lawn and Garden Equipment on Wilmington Pike and, saying he was given a good deal when they heard his cause, he bought a new Husqvarna riding mower for the First Dayton Little League.

Although he’d planned to do this privately, some people connected to FDLL thought his story should be known.

“Our goal has been to raise the program up again, but we have a shoestring budget,” said Dr. Robert Walker, the board president of Dayton Public Schools and a longtime FDLL administrator, coach and umpire. “With no lawn equipment we’ve had to pay commercial people to help with the grass cutting.

“It was often inconsistent, but now with a mower of our own, we can plan a maintenance program.

“This is a real godsend.

“Hassan is an unsung hero.”

Embracing Dayton

Abdalla said he got a lot of life lessons from his late father, Mohamed:

“We grew wheat and oats and cattle on our farm and we had a lot of foreign laborers and immigrants working there,” he said. “They came from all over Africa — Egypt, Chad, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia — and I saw the way my father treated them with kindness.

“Sometimes he received four or five of them in our home to eat lunch or dinner with us. And even when we were kids, we knew we ate last. My father said the migrant workers ate first. He told us, ‘You have a mom and sisters who cook for you. You have a family here. These guys don’t have nobody.’

“So I was just raised to do the right thing — if you can help, you help.”

He said he brought several lessons from his father along with him to Dayton:

“He told me, ‘Respect the law. Respect people. Do what’s right and people will respect you.’”

A couple of years after high school he married a Kettering woman and they had one son, Mohamed, who is now 34.

While that union ended in divorce, he now is remarried to Daria, who is from Poland, and they have two sons: Kamil is 12 and Gabriel is 3.

Abdalla did not risk returning to Libya while Gaddafi was in power. Because of that 32-year absence, he wasn’t there when his father died soon after he’d left for America, nor did he ever see his mother, Rabha, in good health again. She eventually died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.

“I did see her once in Morocco,” he said quietly. “But by then she didn’t recognize me.”

Exiled from his homeland, he embraced Dayton.

“I feel like this is my second home,” said Abdalla, 57, who became a U.S. citizen in 1989. “Actually, it’s really my first home. I’ve lived most of my life here.”

And he’s done so while holding onto some of those precepts first instilled back in Libya.

Rev. Seldon attested to that the other day at Bourbon Street.

“I eat here every week. The food is excellent and you can tell I appreciate food,” laughed the preacher who wore a sharp three-piece suit over his ample frame. “I hold my meetings here, too. And when I come in here with my sister, my niece and my nephew, Hassan treats us like family. He gives my sister clothes, bibs, bottles. One time he bought a Christmas gift. Had the outfit hanging right there (near the table) when we came in.

“Hassan has a good heart. Just a real good heart.”

‘Fighting the bad guys’

Back in Libya, Abdalla said many people he knew were victimized during Gaddafi’s brutal reign:

“I lost cousins, friends and neighbors.”

He said he and some other Libyans who lived in the Miami Valley were involved in the political opposition group to Gaddafi called the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL).

“The leader of the group was my uncle, Dr. Mohamed (Yusuf Al Magariaf),” Hassan said. “He lived in Marietta. Ga.”

When the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring swept through countries in North Africa and the Middle East in the early part of this decade, Gaddafi‘s government was overthrown and he was killed by rebel forces in October 2011.

Abdalla then returned to Libya for the first time since 1979.

“My uncle became the president of Libya,” he said. “When you tell that to somebody here, they think you’re crazy, but it’s true. It was amazing. I went from seeing myself as a political refugee to spending a night in the palace that used to be Gaddafi’s in Tripoli.”

But then things changed.

“The Americans who helped get Gaddafi out, they left and so did the Europeans,” Abdalla said. “So guess who came in? Extremists. ISIS and Al-Qaeda. And they started eliminating all the higher ups, the people who were in authority.”

He said his brother, Mustafa, was the police chief of Benghazi — he got the job after his two predecessors were killed by extremists — when the American embassy was attacked on September 11, 2012.

“I remember him calling me back here and saying, ‘The American embassy is on fire. You have to get ahold of someone,’ ” Abdalla said.

In the ensuing months he said the Libyans resisted the extremists, who he said don’t differentiate:

“They kill everyone: Christians, Muslims, women, children. They kill their own people — 78 percent of their victims are Muslims.

“My brother said, ‘We are fighting the bad guys, but we can’t even buy bullets to defend ourselves.’ My sister (Fatma) was forced to leave her home for six months. They were fighting on her street. Libya lost about 8,000 young men, but they cleared the extremists out.”

As for Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban that went into effect Thursday evening — a partial restriction of people entering the United States from six predominantly Muslim countries, including Libya — Hassan had some thoughts:

“When my folks and the Libyan army were fighting ISIS in Benghazi a year ago, six months ago, they confiscated thousands of Libyan passports that these guys could use and travel somewhere else in the world.

“I know the ban could affect my family coming to visit, but everybody has to protect themselves, too.”

The thing that most disturbs him, though, is the stereotyping and targeting of Muslims and the painting of Islam in terrorist terms.

“Single out the extremists, but don’t target an entire religion,” he said. “Don’t target all immigrants and refugees. I see that happening now.

“Coming here the way I did in ‘79, I don’t know if I would do it like that now. Not the way the atmosphere is here now. While there are plenty of nice, wonderful people here, there’s also a real resistance toward foreigners by some. Refugees and immigrants get blamed for things they are not responsible for.

“I think the most dangerous thing is for human beings having a closed mind. People who don’t travel or learn about other people don’t know who they really are. If you just look, you can see the good in most people.”

A trip to Bourbon Street the other day proved that.

The teenage kid who peddles candy along the street was there getting something to eat, gratis thanks to Abdalla.

“He’s a smart little entrepreneur,” Abdalla said affectionately as he looked across the room at him. “I like his style.”

Before the kid left, he came up to Abdalla’s table, shed his timidity and said:

“Your food is great. I’ll see you later.”

Abdalla nodded: “You be good, Buddy. Keep selling those candies out here. One day you’re gonna be a big businessman.”

The kid smiled: “Hopefully, I’ll own something like this one day.”

“You will. I started just like you,” Abdalla said. “Just work hard and be safe out here.”

The kid beamed, and as he began to walk away he suddenly turned back and gushed:

“Man, I appreciate you.”

The kid wasn’t just speaking for himself, but for Rev. Seldon, the First Dayton Little Leaguers and everyone else who appreciates “a good heart … just a real good heart.”

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