Same Name

Shakespeare asks, “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

But how about two people with the same name? A new television program exploits that situation, comparing celebrities with “ordinary” folks with the same name. I am more interested in two non-celebrities named Wes Moore.

Once a month my friend Pat Brown drives her Buick into the parking lot here at Montclair and picks me up to go to the Garland library for the meeting of Page Turners. The members all read the same book and meet to discuss it. Right now we are selecting books for next year. I recommend “The Other Wes Moore.”

No one is to suggest a book unless she has read it. Before we had that rule, members chose books they had heard about and thought they might like to read. I’ve never read such a bunch of silly romances and third-rate murder mysteries. A common excuses was, “My friend told me it was a good book.”

There is no accounting for tastes.

Last year I saw Wes Moore talk about his book “The Other Wes Moore” on television, but the other Page Turners, justifiably, would not put it on this year’s reading list.

This year I am prepared. I checked the book out of the library, read it, and carried it to the meeting to let the others take a look before adding it to the list of suggested readings.

“The Other Wes Moore” is the story of two young black men with the same name who were born in the same neighborhood in Baltimore, grew up with single mothers, but from childhood followed increasingly divergent paths. As a rebellious child Wes Moore, the author, was sent to military school, received a scholarship to Johns Hopkins, went to England as a Rhodes Scholar, earned a master’s degree from Oxford, and has had a distinguished career in the Army, on Wall Street, and in public service. “The Other Wes Moore”, who is the same age, followed his older brother into selling drugs. While robbing a jewelry store, they killed a policeman. The other Wes Moore is now in prison for life without parole.

Wes Moore writes, “The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine, the tragedy is that my story could have been his.”

I recommend his book to my friends in the library’s reading group. I also recommend it to you.