There was a time, an era those of us of a certain age might remember, when being a man had a simple and clear definition. A man was stoic and generally emotionless, tears acceptable (theoretically) at the birth of a child or when the Cubs won the World Series. After a hard day’s work, a man left his problems at the office. A man was reliably unflappable, ready to be called upon to face drama without the mental baggage — defined as warmth or sympathy or sensitivity — considered bound to slow him down.
Now we know just how bad that definition of a man can be, not only for the male in question, but for everyone around him.
Which brings us to today. What does it mean today to be a man? To be a good adult male who helps others, who contributes and also knows how to cry and tell his kids he loves them? We talked to a few upstanding men to get an idea just how to excel these days.
Word of warning to the old-school guys: there will be tears.
A Lesson On Communication That Began With A Broken Back
If you’re wondering how to define the man of the olden days, Manning Sumner would offer up his father as a fine example. His dad was so tough, he refused to give his kids baby food. Instead, he’d throw whatever he was eating in a blender and feed it to them.
Growing up in Birmingham, Ala., Sumner lived by his father’s strict set of rules, not just a moral code but a regimented schedule for everything, from wake-up times to chores to the required sports practices. “He was just a tough, hard-nosed guy,” says Sumner, 44. “He had a blue-collar mentality that you got what you earned from hard work. And discipline. There was a lot of discipline.”
These days, Sumner is a personal trainer in South Florida and founder of the Legacy workout studios. He also created the No Days Off movement, which looks to empower people to work on themselves, physically and mentally, every day.
Before all that came to Sumner, though, he was a someday-soon NFL linebacker. Or at least he thought that was his path when he played for Auburn University. That all changed in his junior year when he broke his back for the second time and football suddenly became a thing he used to do.
Months passed with Sumner just feeling sorry for himself, a depression he wasn’t sure he’d ever shake. He lost 40 pounds of the muscle that used to be his calling card, and worse, the physical strength that had defined him. “Without football, you lose your identity and what you thought you were going to become. You lose your dreams,” he remembers.
Obsessed with his broken back, Sumner dove into kinesiology, learning what had caused it and what it would take for him to recover. After college, he became a personal trainer and specialized in helping people overcome injuries and get back in shape. Soon he had 29 professional ball players as clients.
He launched his own gym in 2008, and four years later he developed a boot camp-style workout that often attracted 80 or 100 people per class. He started hiring trainers to help, and Sumner took on a managerial role by adopting his father’s regimented authority.
It failed, hard. By demanding too much of them — asking them essentially to be him — Sumner burned through 19 personal trainers who couldn’t work with him.
“I came from that college football world where coaches were screaming, cursing, demanding, very volatile,” Sumner says. “That’s how they got their point across, was to scream at you.”
Adopting a new style in order to save his business, Sumner realized he needed to be kinder, something he had to learn. Communication, positive feedback, emotional support — these were things he had to teach himself, or lose everything he had built.
“I realized I can still be tough, but I can also lift them up and lead by example. It doesn’t mean you have to be weak, though. Some guys think nowadays you have to be soft. You still need to talk with conviction.”
Sumner now has six locations of his fitness studio, with plans to take it across Florida this year and then nationwide. He says it wouldn’t have been possible without learning a simple lesson about communication. He’s also now a husband and dad to a 2-year-old son; he’s finding out that the same lessons he learned at work apply there too.
“I think every generation can improve on the one before it, right?” Manning says. “I’m trying to learn what I learned from my dad: discipline and accountability, and then improve on it.”
Starting With Yourself
Photo by Eduardo Schneider
Not long ago, Keven Allen Jr. had a kid in his office at Florida Atlantic University who had a unique question. The student was, by most accounts, a downright success story — good grades, a leader in his fraternity, involved almost endlessly in campus groups. But yet, the kid asked Allen, “Why am I here? Why am I in college?”
As director of FAU’s Office of First-Generation Student Success and Kelly/Strul Emerging Scholars Program, it’s Allen’s job to help counsel kids whose parents didn’t attend college. With the student in his office looking for direction, Allen told him an answer that might sound counter-intuitive: he needed to start thinking about himself.
What that means, Allen says, is that the kid had spent so much time volunteering and getting involved and working becoming a good student that he had failed to think about himself. From there, the student would need some introspection, to put in some work making sure he’s a good man before he thinks about helping others.
To emphasize his point, Allen repeated a parable of the baker who sells every loaf of his bread every day. There he is, surrounded by delicious food and yet he starves himself.
“There’s a mantra I live by,” Allen says. “You first have to be selfish in order to be selfless.”
It used to be that men generally weren’t introspective, weren’t spending time working on themselves. But Allen says, “the idea and the concept of masculinity has changed,” and now men must do some self-analysis to make sure they’ve handled themselves well.
Achieving that means dedicating some time to it. Allen does this by waking up early before his wife and daughter and spending time thinking about himself, working on goal setting or studying the decisions he made the day before to make sure they fit to his values.
“As a man who does this self-analysis,” Allen says, “you’ll then have the strength and you’ll have the momentum to give to everyone else who relies on you.”
Win Or Lose, There’s Always Love
On election night in 2018, Andy Thomson walked off stage after giving a concession speech and found his father waiting for him. Thomson had lost his bid to become a Boca Raton city commissioner by 30 votes, and so he was understandably wrecked.
“I’m proud of you for how you carried yourself in this race,” his father told him. “And I love you.”
It wasn’t totally unexpected. Thomson, 39, says his father has never once, in the past 30-plus years, ended a conversation without telling his son that he loves him. It’s something that has defined their relationship, this idea that Thomson always knew, no matter how tough things got, that his dad loved him.
A day after his big loss in 2018, Thomson got unexpected good news. After a second count, Thomson had actually won the election by 32 votes. But having that day of thinking he’d lost, it showed Thomson just how important it is for a parent to express his feelings to his kids.
“It allowed me to have that period of time where I had 10-12 hours where I thought I lost, and I was coming to grips with that. And that was the moment of pride and love that I cherish with my dad.”
Now, as a father of five, Thomson says he does the same thing. “That’s really set the tempo for how I try to be a dad,” Thomson says. “To me, it’s got to be critical to express yourself to your children. In this world, if your parents aren’t giving you the kind of unconditional love they ought to, it can become a scary and isolating place.”
With his kids ranging in ages from one to 10, Thomson has often coached their sports teams — basketball, soccer and most recently baseball. His 6-year-old son’s baseball team suffered its first loss of the season, and later was complaining about how bad his team did. Thomson, thinking back to those 12 hours where he thought he’d lost his race, told him, “Son, in every game, there’s going to be a winner and a loser and you’re going to lose sometimes. Part of life is learning how to lose. It doesn’t stop.”
Last year, Thomson began an initiative to run all 475 miles of streets within the Boca Raton borders, and he brought his kids along. They picked up trash, ending up with 1,300 pounds by the end. Not long after, he was bringing his son to school when he watched his boy bend down and pick up a piece of trash, nobody telling him he should.
The idea of being a man these days, Thomson says it’s about instilling your kids with good lessons and making sure they know you appreciate them, a departure from the men of generations past. “That’s what I associate with manhood,” Thomson says. “If you’re a father, that’s the governing principle.”
Sometimes A Man Decorates A Cake
Photo Courtesy of Fireman Derek’s Bake Shop
Derek Kaplan was maybe 15 years old when he made his first Key lime pie. It was good. So good in fact that people started offering to buy them from him. He sold them door-to-door, to restaurants and sometimes on Coconut Grove street corners.
He says the sales pitch then was simple: “Who doesn’t love a delicious pie?”
Some people might be surprised, though, by the now 38-year-old man still selling these pies. Even back as a teenager, he was 6 feet 2 inches tall and 300 pounds, a lineman who would go on to play at Grambling State.
Men don’t bake, right? Men watch sports and maybe barbecue and don’t get into decorations on a birthday cake. That’s the kind of thinking Kaplan has just never bought into.
“At the end of the day, not everybody’s into football or race cars or cage fighting,” Kaplan says. “There shouldn’t be any judgment of what you do.”
After college, Kaplan would go on to become a firefighter in Miami. He started cooking for his firehouse, and the big guy who used to sell pies on the street corner killed it with his desserts.
“There was a benefit psychologically for me,” he says, “because I found baking therapeutic and a creative outlet.”
In 2013, he retired from the firehouse and opened Fireman Derek’s Bake Shop in 2014. Just like some might look at him and not expect a baker, Kaplan says he leaned hard into being the kind of manager people might not expect from him. He tries to be empathetic and understanding of the problems his employees might be having in and out of work. He works at expressing himself more and making sure the 60 people who work for him feel appreciated.
Oftentimes, people meet him and expect a big, gruff man matching the muscles. “People are relieved to see I’m a sensitive person and people can voice themselves and be heard and be valued in front of me,” he says. “It allows people to relate to you on a more human level.”
In the past year, he’s tripled the size of his business and moved into a new, much larger storefront in Wynwood. He says it was among the biggest challenges of his life to see that much growth so quickly. And it’s in moments like that, he says, when a man is truly tested.
“What life is really about is the day-to-day grind. Getting up, working hard, and setting a good example for your employees, your coworkers, your children, and really taking care of business. And also being honest and being kind to people. I think that’s more bad ass than someone who’s just showing off with their lifestyle.”
Men often think they have masculinity figured out when they have a good-looking spouse, a car, a house. But masculinity in Kaplan’s mind? It’s being sensitive to others, being humble and not being afraid to be the biggest, best baker you’ve ever seen.