Kevin’s father was sent to prison when he was one year old, and his brother only a few months.
27 years later, on June 28 2018, his father, Kevin Frye Sr, was released at the age of 51, and the family captured their emotional reunion on camera.
Having a huge expanse in all aspects of life where a father should have been, Kevin Jr and his brother experienced hardships growing up in inner city Washington D.C.
Here’s the emotional video:
Speaking to UNILAD, Kevin Jr explained the journey his family have been through:
I honestly didn’t even know he was getting out until about a month ago. I stopped past my grandmother’s house after running a few errands.
She asked me to stick around because my father was about to call but I was in a hurry. As soon as I said that, he calls. So we were all talking on speaker phone and then asks me to take the phone off speaker.
As soon as I pick up the phone he tells me that he’s coming home. I honestly can’t even remember every word he said because I kind of went numb.
He said he’d be home in less than 90 days and not to tell my grandmother because he wanted to surprise her. Next thing I know my family and I are on our way to North Carolina to pick him up.
Kevin Jr’s grandmother didn’t know her son was being released and was under the impression they were just going to visit.
Kevin Jr captured this footage of his grandmother seeing his dad for the first time:
Speaking about how he felt when he saw his dad, Kevin Jr said:
As for myself, it felt like a dream. I hadn’t seen my father in person since 1999. I was nine years old and my brother was eight. I wasn’t even a teenager.
So seeing him now, I’m 28, a grown man…it was just so surreal. I honestly still have a difficult time trying to put it in to words so answering these questions are a little hard for me as I’m still sorting through what I feel and the best way to verbalise it.
We hugged one another tightly until the people told us we had to leave. The car ride home I was just staring at his face. My entire life people told me I looked just like him and for the first time I could see it for myself.
My brother, nephew and myself all have dimples that we got from my father. From the way he’s built, his teeth, the way he talks, laughs, cracks jokes…all of it. Even now that he’s been home a few weeks I still find myself in amazement by all of our similarities.
Kevin Jr spoke about the times he ‘resented’ his father when he was in jail, saying to his mother he didn’t even want a father because of the anger he had towards him.
He and his brother express a lot of thanks and love for their mother, Lamenthia Davis, who ‘never said anything bad about [their] father’ and is the person Kevin gives credit to ‘for helping me [him] come to a place where [he] could forgive him’.
Kevin Jr told UNILAD about the difficulties of not having his dad around:
I do know that at some point I started to pretend that he didn’t exist so that it wouldn’t hurt me anymore.
I’d have dreams of what it’d be like to have my father home, to play catch with him and my brother, for him to come to our football and basketball games.
Whenever I would hear other people call their fathers ‘Dad’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Pops’ it always sounded like a foreign word to me, because I never said it.
On the way home from the prison, the family stopped at a restaurant to get Kevin Frye Sr a red lobster. What else would anyone want after being released?
Here he is enjoying the red lobster:
Kevin Frye Sr was sentenced to 20 years to life, at the age of 25, for murder while armed and assault with intent to kill, so the family are very appreciative to have ‘gotten him back’.
Kevin Frye Jr said:
I realise how fortunate my brother and I, as well as my entire family, are to have gotten him back after 27 years of incarceration. Not everyone gets a chance like this. To be reunited with a loved one after almost three decades of being separated, but we did. And for that I am grateful.
We’re all so happy that he’s home and we can’t wait to make up for time lost by building new memories.
My father and I talk everyday now, multiple times a day via text and FaceTime and it’s never a short call when we do. And he’s in the halfway house now so I can see home on Sunday’s until he’s able to go about freely.
Kevin uploaded the video of him and his dad to Twitter and it received over 400 likes, even inspiring a few people to reach out to their own dads.
Apart from making up for lost time and showing his dad how D.C. has changed, Kevin told him he’d ‘dunk on him’.
The pair, who support Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders (Sr and Jr respectively), have a bet for the upcoming season that whichever of the two teams has the better record by season’s end, the loser has to be a fan of the winner’s team the following season.
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