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OXFORD — Next month Ronald Winbush had planned to take his first trip to Africa, to the country of Ghana on the Atlantic coast, with his brother, one of America's foremost scholars, Dr. Raymond Winbush.

Ronald, the 58-year-old father of Miami University sophomore basketball player Nick Winbush, was playing basketball last month and suffered a heart attack and died.

It was a tragic and unexpected loss for Nick. His father, like his uncle, had played basketball at Cleveland State, received his master's from Case Western Reserve and ran a drug treatment agency in Cleveland.

"He was someone I looked up to," Nick said.

It's a fitting tribute, perhaps, that Nick is about to take his father's place on the trip to Ghana on July 13-27.

"When it happened," Nick said, referring to his father's death, "my uncle asked me if I wanted to go, and I said yes."

His uncle, Dr. Winbush, is director of the Institute for Urban Affairs at Morgan State University. He has written two books, "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Healthy Black Boys" and "Should America Pay? — Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations." He sits on the executive board of the National Council for Black Studies.

"My uncle, Ray, goes there a lot and he's thinking of buying a house," said Nick, who will be making his second trip to Ghana. "He's done a lot of work there for his job. He's really familiar with the country. It will be his eighth or ninth time there."

The journey promises to be uplifting, though it also will have its melancholy moments, and not just because of Nick's sad family circumstances.

"I like it a lot," Nick said. "The people there are really friendly, and there is a lot of culture in the city.

"The city, Accra, it's nice. We stayed in this hotel that Will Smith stayed when he made the movie "Ali." Bill Clinton has stayed there. It's like a five-star hotel."

Accra is largest city in Ghana, with a population of slightly more than 2 million.

There is another side to Ghana, a dark reminder of its past.

"They have slave dungeons in the city of Cape Coast," he said. "We visited them on my first trip. The slaves were held there before they were taken to America. It's kind of depressing, but at the same time it's cool to see something like that, something you probably wouldn't have learned in history class.

"You're in there, you can hear the sound of the water. It's almost scary being there. You can imagine what they went through. There are four walls and the floor, and they were crammed with maybe five or 10 times the number of people they were supposed to hold. It's crazy."

But Nick obviously likes the fact that Ghana has, figuratively and literally, thrown off the shackles to become a country worth visiting.

"I feel lucky," he said.

"A lot of people say they'd love to go to Africa. If you're an African-American and you have the resources, it's a good place to go. You see how Africans live. People think of Africa and they think of safaris and giraffes and elephants. In Ghana the people live (in modern, civilized cities) just like us."

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.