Our Mother; Devoted to Her Educational Career & Community Improvement

Gift to my mother from Secondary (High School) Parent Council

Perhaps for her work with Renaissance Newark, maybe for her work to improve housing in Newark, or work on various committees

Re-elected as president of Arts High P.T.S.O. (Parent Teacher Student Organization) from 1976 until finally resigning from it around turn of the century, she also stayed active with the Arts High Alumni Association until retirement

1 of my best gift ever from my mom, my precious Chaos & sister Janet

Words of inspiration from an inspiration

1 of Lynn's Christmas gifts to our mother was this painting

I have never met more than two people in my entire life who knew my mother that did not rave about how sweet and wonderful she was. Triple that for people who've known her through educational arenas as a child advocate. I've never known anyone so dedicated to improving the communities we have lived in and Newark's public schools for ALL children. My mother repeatedly served as president of our residence association as we grew up, and she coordinated many youth programs during and between such times.

Yet, despite all my love, I secretly envied the kids in her "Student Leadership Group" and otherwise for gaining so much of her love and time as she did things for them through one of the many volunteer positions she'd created on and after the job-- because she then started coming home from work much later every night and too exhausted for as much quality and quantity of time with me. By this time, Lynn and Janet were in college. This continued into my adulthood though the love between us was still clearly there and strong.

Eventually,at some point, a civil service test was created just for her because she wore so many hats at work as an administrative assistant. She then became the Coordinator of Secondary Student Activities at her job after passing it. She was given a nice big office and her own assistants. That is, until a year after the state came in and took over our Board of Education, turning our district into Newark Public Schools. This was a couple of years after I'd begun teaching. My sister Janet had been diagnosed with a terminal illness the summer before I became a full time teacher in March (after substitute teaching since college) and my maternal grandfather had caught prostrate cancer shortly afterward, dying less than two months before my career took off.

After the state took over, our mom was amongst those given an unjust demotion instead, just two weeks after my sister Janet was buried, four years after her diagnosis. Lynn had also gone back to Atlanta after staying up here for months at the time helping to take care of Janet before getting a huge cut in pay herself for leaving so abruptly to take care of our sister as my mom and I basically kept so buried in work what with me trying to get tenured and Ma trying to avoid the pink slip that so many competent staff members were getting from the new district leaders. I became tenured during the year that Janet passed away and I still feel guilty for not being there as much as I wanted to be when she needed me most. I did not know until sometime this year, that those demoting her, had apologized to my mother at some point after learning all the things she had done for Newark's youth.

This middle sister had always been my 2nd greatest idol and we had such a tight bond that Janet was actually one of my best friends (besides Lynn's).  I thank God for her that Janet and Lynn have visited and spoken to Mommy many times since passing, in beautiful, reassuring dreams at night. I have had a couple of similar ones.

The next summer after Janet passed, my maternal grandmother, who'd come to live with us after my grandfather passed, had a stroke and I got the pink slip (mistakenly--which was quickly corrected) that same week, just two weeks or less before returning from summer vacation. Grandma passed away the following November, in 98' due to complications from a healthcare accident made by a worker at her nursing home. I had always wanted to be so financially successful from my own businesses started on the side, that no one close in my family would have to struggle through life for any reason or end up in a nursing home. Seeing my grandmother in one for over a year was unbearably painful and that, plus again staying buried in work much of the time, also makes it hard to think about her too since she has passed as well...Unknown to many who knew her, the period after my grandmother's stroke bore heavy on my mother too, but unlike myself, she was always great at appearing fine despite the worst of circumstances. I could literally see the weight lift off her once she knew my grandmother was in a better place after passing.

We also finally had to put to sleep, the cat seen here which I'd had for literally half my life---sixteen years--about a month before my grandmother's passing. My mother had named him "Chaos" the night she found him getting a flat tire replaced at a gas station during a lightning storm since it was such a chaotic night when he was found. Many a friend of the family, including people once terrified of or enemies of cats, came to own cats of their own after seeing what a fabulous cat Chaos was while spending time at our, and later, my homes. He and the other cats we have had as a family and/or individually, all stem from my mother realizing how beneficial cats can be as a sweet addition to any family when she brought home our very first kitten when I was less than 5 years old.

O.k., enough with the rambling. Back to my mother:
Always great at multi-tasking, a gene my sisters shared, she has won Employee of the Month, Citizen of the Year from Newark's former mayor and city council, and as I said, God knows how many other awards. She was even included in a book on the history of Newark. But now, today, I just want to say on behalf of Lynn, Janet, and myself, "Thank you Mama" for the greatest role you've ever played... "Mother of the Millenium" and "My #1 Idol!"

Mommy We Thank You --for You, Your Miniatures, & Other Art!

I saved the best for last.

I get my artistic talents & appreciation from both parents but especially my mother. We always received compliments on how beautifully Mommy decorated the homes we grew up in and they were always neat and filled with arts, crafts, and cultural artifacts, particularly a couple of her high school paintings framed and displayed along with paintings she made of our family when we were small. Then she started building those infamous miniatures A.K.A. dollhouses. Everything from the first mansion built for Lynn, which eventually had 23 rooms, to the country houses for me & my grandparents, to the brownstone for my sister Janet, etc. Later, she branched off into building other miniature buildings i.e. a country store and roomboxes, including those designed just for the holidays, & the latest is a winery.

Family-oriented TV shows were all we ever watched--usually while huddled up together on the couch (whether at our home in New Jersey or in North Carolina w/my grandparents and "Uncle" Donny), whether here in NJ or at our vacation home in NC. It was not unusual for us to sing, dance, and play around the house together as well as sing family songs she taught us during car rides, when not playing some car game that Lynn created.  It was truly a Cosby Show lifestyle --without the Cosby couple & dough.

She would drive us to malls, bookstores, and on tours around the city (that's NY for any of you foreigners), including to museums, parks, the aquarium, international festivals, Chinatown, Little Italy, and window shopping walks at Christmastime so we could see all the lovely decorations. We were enrolled in the YMWCA where Lynn excelled in gymnastics, we took art classes at Newark's Museum, Lynn even took piano lessons and I took dance lessons for at least 7 years--all outside of school. We were also in the Girl Scouts (or Brownies)-- which she'd created a division of in our apt. building as president of the Residence Association.

Bedtime rituals included a storybook when we were really young and we never outgrew the good night kisses and hugs, plus "I love you's" after we said our prayers. Our living room was filled to the brim with boxes, wrappings, and holiday decorations on Christmas Day and my spoiled self even asked "Is this it?" one such holiday after opening all the gifts that left boxes covering our entire living room; mom always had us make a list but then bought us whatever "she" wanted us to have, some including educational toys & always including  great books. We had a bunch of New Year's Eve implements that we all made noise with together and danced around with right after the annual countdown at Times Square watched on TV --along with a few sips of wine. At Easter, we'd go Easter egg hunting around the apt. we spent most of our remaining childhood in after decorating the eggs-- if we weren't at an Easter Egg Hunt in our family churchgrounds in NC.

While Ma was at work, other than extracurricular activities after school, such as Lynn's cheerleading, we had to walk straight home, check in with her every half hr. while playing outside with friends, and be in before dark. As much as I detested this as a pre-teen and adolescent (since none of our friends' parents were anywhere near as strict and "smothering"), I finally appreciated it by my sophomore year in college--when I became an activist and advocate of parenting skills myself.

Mommy would come straight home from work and start cooking for us--that is, until I (being the youngest)became a teenager and lived off of my own cooking until later at night when she finally arrived home from one of her countless educational/community meetings. Those peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, oodles of noodles, & cereals sure couldn't replace the meals I coudn't wait for her to get home to cook. Thinking back though, she did come up with a couple of rather creative recipes we'd fondly named "Mama's Garbage" (all the leftovers mixed together from pastas, meats, and tomatoe bases) and "Flojjaloppa" (all the leftovers mixed together from the bottoms of our cereal boxes)--but they, too, were delicious. As a matter of fact, even something as simple as a cup of her instant coffee and toast is still to this day second to none--and don't even get me started on her full course hot breakfasts! Back then, much of what she'd throw together was processed food, but in later years and especially since retiring, oh my God...you just wouldn't believe what a gourmet and health-conscious chef she's become! Meals have always been eaten together at the dinner table in our homes--after saying grace.  It wasn't until Lynn wrote a high school paper entitled  something to the effect of  "I Never Knew We Were Poor" that I, too, realized that we'd grown up poor despite a middle class lifestyle & tastes yet were always rich on love.

In Loving Memory of My Grandparents

We never saw our mother as religious but her parents were devout Christians, religious and influential enough to impact our walking to church together on our own a few blocks from home back in Jersey, when the spirit moved us. (Lynn even sung in the choir with Whitney Houston at this church which owned the apartment complex we'd spent most of our lives growing up in--but Whitney just had fame as a magazine model back then).

I always wanted to go camping and never forget one summer telling my mother that I wanted to do this instead of spending the whole summer downsouth. Her reply, which I came to appreciate and understand years later, was: "Go camping in your grandparent's backyard!" Our yard down there was surrounded by woods on two sides, including behind our farm, so there actually was that possibility--though I never took it. Instead, we'd spend our time down there helping to pick and shell butter beans, eating my grandmother's great preparation of those and many other forms of fresh produce that we grew, playing cards or watching TV together, and coming up with all kinds of fun, creative ways to entertain ourselves outside when we weren't playing on our swingset or in the pool that Grandpa bought for us, on our bikes, in Donny's go-car, visiting with friends and family nearby, going swimming at a nearby beach...

Theses photos depict my maternal grandparents without whom none of us would be here. They were loved dearly, not only by immediate family, but a host of nieces, nephews, and great ones that they'd helped their many siblings raise. They'd grown up together and one of my grandmother's 6 brothers also married my grandfather's sister (which is just one reason why I have many double cousins). My mother refers to this great aunt and uncle as her other parents and their 13 children as her siblings, rather than 1st cousins.

Active in the NAACP at one point, and very traditional about gender roles and other things, Grandma stayed home managing the household throughout their marriage and they also helped raise many of their numerous nieces and nephews--and great ones-- since she was only able to bear my mother and my grandfather only had one other child, my Aunt Anna, who is much older than my mother.

When they moved up to NY so my grandfather could work in a factory during the Great Migration, their home was the origin of many another family members jumpstart to life in the north (mostly NYC and Newark NJ back then). One photo shows them at their 50th wedding anniversary renewing their vows in our family church down south (built by relatives), another shows them later in the day after they did the same for their 60th wedding anniversary. They were married for 64yrs. before my grandfather moved on to the next life.

He'd worked in that factory for many years and later as a car mechanic, before he retired and they started their own farm back in our hometown, like a couple of their siblings still had. Each of the 3 grandparents that I knew, died at the age of 84; may they rest in peace. Most of their siblings also died one or two years after another, during the last couple of decades in their 80s as well. I can still remember from age 7 when my great grandmother, who my mother was named after, passed away in her 90s. A couple of my grandfather's sisters are still kicking and hysterical in their 90s. We all go to visit them whenever we get the chance while "at home" downsouth.