My brother David has always been a hero. If he witnesses a purse snatching, he’ll chase the perpetrator down to get a stranger’s belongings back. He saved me more than once from my own self-destructive tendencies when I was young. For years he helped kids from the Bronx become chess champions — going as far…

Thanks to Mattie, my grandfather’s second wife, I spent my childhood as a small adult. Mattie had spirited me away from my alcoholic mother before I was two years old. The story Miz Johnny told me was that Carmella (my mother) was living in a two-bedroom trailer on the outskirts of town when Mattie stopped…