Surviving Dunbar: A dream that tastes like BBQ

When Curt Sheard looks around Dunbar, he sees the sweetest of memories.

Along South Street, he sees summer days when he and his friends walked home from the pool, sticky with the juice of mangoes they’d pluck from trees.

At the corner of Highland Avenue and Dora Street, he sees the acre where he was raised by a hard-working father and a mom who stopped the school bus she drove one afternoon to give Sheard a whooping after she spotted him running from a girl.

He was a husky kid and the girl, he explained, “had really long nails.”

Sheard, 43, laughs at this memory and leans back as if drawing joy from the past as he chatted outside the STARS Complex in Fort Myers as cheerleaders and football players arrived for practice for the Dunbar Rattlers, the youth travel league of which he’s the vice-president.

Dunbar can be rife with danger, but its history is rich and its pride is deep. From the outside, its prospects for becoming a safe and prosperous community may seem bleak but there are dreamers like Sheard with aspirations that are only bright.

“I’ve never sold drugs. I’ve never done drugs,” said Sheard, who is on the cusp of the biggest deal of his life. “At the same time I am Dunbar … I’ve traveled around the world and there’s no place like home.”

I’m the past, current and I strive to be the future.”

His dream is his survival tool. The father of two is working to exhaustion, running on four hours of sleep most nights as he launches his Big Boi’s BBQ sauces and rubs into 16 Walmarts from Bradenton to Naples along with working full-time as a construction project manager and volunteering for the Rattlers. Big Boi’s is set to arrive in stores Oct. 7.  He scored the deal after pitching during an open call this summer at Walmart headquarters.

But to be clear, Sheard doesn’t see Dunbar as place where he needs tools to survive.  

His is the final profile in the "Surviving Dunbar" series: a look at how daily life is different for those who live under the threat of gun violence. 

“I honestly don’t like that title, ‘Surviving Dunbar’ because, you make it seem like it’s a war zone. Now if you say, ‘Curt, you’re surviving Afghanistan.’ Yeah, you’re surviving Afghanistan.”

Surviving Dunbar: Grandma uses hurricane shutters to stop bullets

Dunbar pales to Afghanistan, where Sheard lived from 2011 to 2013 in Taliban territory as he managed the construction of an Army base.

Dunbar does reflect a compression of extremes in Lee County: poverty, unemployment, and homicides. Five years ago, Fort Myers ranked fifth in the nation out of cities of its size for murder, beating out the once-notorious Compton, California. The bloodshed has not abated. Often, the victims and perpetrators of the city’s most violent crimes have ties to Dunbar.

But that’s not the Dunbar Sheard focuses on. On the evening we met, he pointed out the basketball courts and football fields teeming with kids and the warmth and respect extended to him by those who passed by. It’s not that Sheard is blind to negativity.

“We’re the heart of the city and if the heart is not right, the city is not right … I think you’ve got to appreciate Dunbar because I do appreciate what it has to offer but you have to be willing to be part of the solution and a lot of people are like ‘I’m too scared.’”

His teenage son and daughter attend Dunbar High. 

 “My children interact with the same kids getting in trouble or they’re friends of friends of friends so my children may be one or two people removed from an incident, so if I can affect that 14-year-old-boy who’s out on the football field today or that 13-year-old girl who is out here cheering today so they can make a smart choice tomorrow, that may save my child’s life.”

Surviving Dunbar: Loss, hope and a pair of Air Jordans

This season, the Rattlers began barricading streets near its practice fields so kids and parents would feel safer without cars driving by. They rent lights for the fields.  He does keep “his head in a swivel” but bad things can happen anywhere. The bad things don’t distract him from his dream. 

“Yeah, we’re f---ed up in our churches. We’re f---ed up in our houses. There’s no community support. There’s no police support and there’s no city and county support but at the same time, I’ve made the conscious choice that I’m going to put my brand back here in the same town where I grew up.”  

Sheard’s choice of words came in an impassioned stream after some prodding as to if his Dunbar was a romanticized version of reality. His words came from a place of being frustrated with journalists he sees as eager to pounce on the worst, when he sees so much good. 

“I’m not living in a world with rose-colored lenses. I choose to put on the biggest pair of yellow lenses so where I can see clearly enough where my path is clear. So no, I see the negativity but I refuse to allow it to separate me from my goal or ambition.”  

Sheard has strategic goals to broaden distribution for Big Boi’s sauces. He hopes to grow big enough to open a manufacturing plant in Dunbar along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and bring jobs to a community with a smattering of employment opportunities.   

Barbecue has long been his passion. After becoming the first in his family to graduate college, the former Army officer returned to Fort Myers, where he opened (and soon closed) a barbecue restaurant. At one point, he sold Mason jars of his sauces out of his Honda Accord. He tested his recipe with cooks around town.

“It was, ‘Man, it’s alright,’ or ‘It’s pretty good’ or ‘You got something.’ In my community and my culture, I’ll take it to the bank because on the other side of the tracks, white people are going to love it. ‘Oh my God, it’s the best thing since sliced bread.’ If black people like it, white people love it. That’s a true statement. White people have been stealing from us forever. They stole rock n’ roll. They stole jazz. So if you like it, y’all will love it.”

For those unfamiliar with Fort Myers, it should be noted that the railroad tracks remain a color barrier though mandated segregation was repealed in 1963. The tracks still largely, though not entirely, represent the division of where black people live and white people live. Last year, a black city councilwoman worried about placing a voting location in Dunbar, east of the tracks, out of concern white people would fear crossing the tracks.  

People thrive west of the tracks in what passes as paradise down the road from neighborhoods that have earned the city the moniker, “Lil’ Pakistan,” though you can count the number of streets between these two areas of town on your hands.

Yet, if there were no dreamers in Dunbar, there would be no hope for a day when people don’t feel the need to adapt their lives to the fear of being shot.

A grandmother wouldn’t have to keep her hurricane shutters up all year. A teenager wouldn’t stress about the physical ramifications of pressing the wrong “like” on Facebook. A mother could drive at night in peace in her own neighborhood. 

Learning how to cope with the murder of a loved one wouldn’t be a common part of growing up.

Fear and hope can co-exist. A dream can be as sweet as a memory. And, in Sheard’s case, the dream tastes like barbecue sauce.  

Local product

Big Boi's BBQ sauces and rubs are set to arrive in local Walmart stores and markets on Oct. 7. A few of the 16 stores where you can expect to find them:

4770 Colonial Blvd., Fort Myers  

1619 Del Prado Blvd., Cape Coral  

545 Pine Island Road, North Fort Myers

14821 6 Mile Cypress Parkway, Fort Myers

9131 College Parkway,  No. 101, Fort Myers

A cornbread mix is anticipated to hit shelves in November.