Edna H. Grant

Interview location: Ingersoll Community Center, 177 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, New York
When: Fall 2018

MONDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY

This is a new center. Before they rebuilt this center, I worked in the area, and I used to come round and volunteer my services to help feed the kids. I did that for years, and now we have a new center. I still come in and volunteer on Wednesdays and Thursdays, we come in and we have our bingo, and we have a lot of fun doing that.

We play [Bingo] for play money. *laughing* We have a lot of fun doing it and we have lunch and stuff. We’ll make lunch and sometimes the center donate us some lunch. So that’s about what we do.

On Mondays I go to Cumberland Diagnostic Treatment Center. We have a medical class there [that teaches us to eat healthy and manage our diabetes]. I attend that on Monday, for I have blood pressure and diabetes. And [I graduated] from there and I was one of the guest speakers as well. So I enjoy that. I graduated, but I still go back, because there’s always something that you could learn. [They let you know] how [you did] with your blood pressure and your diabetes, which I did very well with mine. Because my A1C went down to 5.9, and I’m still working on it.

[I’ve been dealing with diabetes] I guess about 12 years, maybe. But so far so good. I learned with the blood pressure to take the salt away from me and all that sodium. And with the sugar, the starch, and the sweets, I learned to not deal with all of that. So I’m working on it. Still working.

Well, I said at my age I’m doing wonderful. I’m able to still—I call this my “Bentley”—but I’m still able to move.

COMMUNITY POLICE

I’m the treasurer for the police PSA3 community camps for over 30 years. In your community you have different precincts, so my precinct is 88th precinct and the PSA3 community. Last night was one of our meetings. So if you have problems in the community you’re able to speak with the police officer. You don’t have to do it in an open forum, but you could talk to them on the side to let them know what’s going on.

[The community collaboration with the police] works wonderful, it does. Because you get to know who your police officers are in the area, and you learn to meet with them, and sometimes here in the community center, they play basketball with the kids, and outside sometimes in the park they play games, and sometimes they just meet the kids in the streets, start playing, even once in a while you have them dancing. *Laughing. So it’s been fun.

COMING TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

[I’ve been in the neighborhood] Since October, 1959. October 21, 1959. I can remember that. Well, you can remember what happened years ago, you can’t remember what happened yesterday. And that’s a true fact.

I was just so happy to get here, because I had been burned out from where I was and it took such a long time. At the time my husband and I were separated, so I had my daughter, and looking for a place to live was kind of hard. I walked—I used to go to Manhattan [to the management office at 250 Broadway] every Monday and Thursday with my baby by the hand [she must’ve been around 3, 4], so it took me six weeks to get in here. I guessed it was [they got] tired of looking at me.


I was living in another part of Brooklyn, on Gates Avenue. Before the landlord set the place on fire. She was evil. Evil. She wanted more money, and at that time I wasn’t giving her no more than what I was supposed to give her. So the way they set it, they set the staircase [on fire] so you couldn’t get down, so she got us good.

My Friend was there. [William Powell. He called for the fire department. The building was empty except for one neighbor and me. And he told me to hand him my baby but I didn’t.] He made this so we were able to get out. And [the neighbor] lady, she used to live downstairs, but she came upstairs that particular night. She was able to get out with her children on the back they was standing when they yelled for help, and that’s how the fire department [found us]. And we had to be careful how we would go down the side of the stairs so the stairs wouldn’t cave in. But we made it.

But after I moved out of here, everything changed. For better. And I been here, don’t want to leave, wanna stay here. Yeah, but we’ll see how that work out. Like I been in that same building since 1959. But I was on the 10th floor. And then, later on, in the year my daughter got pregnant, I moved downstairs where I’m at on the 8th floor, and I’ve been down there since 1972.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY

I’ve seen the good, bad, and the ugly [in this neighborhood]. And right now it’s not the best.

When I moved here it was beautiful. I mean I’ve seen a lot of things come in, nice tall buildings and stuff, but the people are different. The buildings used to be so nice. Clean. It was just so much different. I taught the people to say, you know, we live here, we have to take care of where we live. But you just got a whole different crowd. But when I moved here, if you wasn’t married, you couldn’t come in here. That’s right. If you wasn’t married, you couldn’t come in here. But see, they changed that, and when they changed it things started going down. And that’s how it was all these years. But maybe it’ll come back up.


[I was separated when I moved in and] I guess they figured we’re young, maybe get back together, you know. But it worked out, anyway, whatever reason they had, it worked out.

In the inside of the development it’s completely different, the people are different. you never would see a shopping cart sitting outside with bottles and cans in it. Your ground stayed clean. You’d never see bicycles chained up to the fence. You didn’t see all of that. And before you never had the—like you see those fences out there—we didn’t have that, we had a little chain fence.

Our kids were so trained, if their ball went over there, they tip-toed and got that ball and tip-toed out the fence. They knew not to mess up the grass. But now it’s different. The grass is not what it used to be. The building’s not what it used to be. All the windows used to be beautiful. People used to have old shades at that time. But now you see people with, I guess sheets hanging up to the window. That wasn’t like that. It wasn’t allowed, because when you moved in here, they gave you a book how your apartment should look. No more. I don’t know if they still do that or not, but I know the apartments do not look what they should—at least I could say about the windows, I don’t know about the apartment.

I just believe that they not following the rules. Just not following the rules, because if they were, they wouldn’t be like that. You know, the management was stronger, I’ll put it that way. And they also, to me, cared about where they worked as well. Right now when you make a phone call, you can’t even hardly get anybody in the management office. Sad, sad.

But you know what, I’m not gonna put it all on management either, on the housing authority. A lot of it is the tenants themselves. They’re not taking care enough. Because I say management’s not here throwing nothing out the window, making the grounds dirty, you know, that’s the tenants. Or tenants have people that’s not on the lease doing these things in their apartments. I won’t put it all on New York City Housing Authority. It works both ways.

HI, MS. GRANT!

I tell you one thing, a lot of people say “Hi, Ms. Grant! Hi, Ms. Grant!” I don’t know who they are, but I speak anyway. *laughing*

Like even yesterday, I was complaining about the handicap ramp, where the concrete is broken there. So one of the guys introduced me to the assistant manager, so I was explaining to him what was going on, so he said he would go look at it, and I was telling him about someone who had broke the door, so he said he would go check it out. So this morning when I came out, a man was sitting on the stoop. He said somebody was just here looking at that door. I said “But they still didn’t fix it!” So now I give him a couple of days, [if they do not fix it] I get back on the phone again. Sometimes a lot of people say they can’t speak to the manager. I don’t have that problem. I call and I ask to speak to the manager. I just tell him who I am and I speak to him.

I KNEW ALL OF THIS WAS COMING

I like changes [in the neighborhood]. I like changes. I don’t have a problem with that. I do not have a problem with that at all.

I go in whatever store I want to go down, buy what I want, and I’m happy.

I remember when I used to work on Bridge Street, before they did MetroTech. [I worked at Nadel book binder. I saw the planning book the city had ordered.] So I knew all of this was coming. It was in the book, and the T[enant] A[ssociation]’s office used to be right there on the corner. But people don’t read, so now it’s surprising to them, but all this been coming for years. It’s nothing new to me.

The only thing I—like in this block here—I’m used to having a laundromat, which we don’t have. You usually have a fish and chip joint, which you don’t have. Those things I miss.

That store right there, that supermarket, is overpriced. I forgot the name, I don’t really go in.

Now I go get the bus. I take the Access-A-Ride, go all the way to Broadway-Myrtle, to shop. To Food Bazaar. Now that’s fast turnover, so you know the food is fresh. So that’s what I do.

THE JUDGE’S THANKSGIVING

I still love to get in the kitchen and do my thing. I like making seafood salad, I like making chop barbeque, which is pork, I like—well I got a new way of making turkey wings now, instead of making the whole turkey. And it comes out like it was in the oven, [but] I do it on top of the stove.

Thanksgiving I’m invited to the Judge’s house.

Supreme Judge. For Thanksgiving. I was there—what was the last holiday? Labor Day?—yeah, I was invited to the Judge’s house. And I had a wonderful time. Every year I go there for Labor Day. So this year I’m going to the [Judge’s] father’s house for Thanksgiving And when she was sworn in, I was also invited and she put me right on the front row. It was a lot of fun.

Her name is Genine Edwards. Supreme Court Judge, Brooklyn. I met her through another friend of mine. Every Thanksgiving they invite me and I go. They always want me to cook something too. They like for me to make the macaroni and cheese and collard greens. And I don’t mind doing—but I have a friend of mine, Patricia Tanner, she helps me because like I said I have problems with my hands. So I don’t mind. They have a lot of fun. They have all the drinks you want, if you choose to do it. *laughing* But I take too much medication, so I can’t—some water, some tea and juice is fine for me. But we have fun.

CHILDREN

Oh, Lord, I have a bunch of them. My daughter had two kids, a son and a daughter. Daughter’s oldest. And her daughter has three, a boy and two girls. And her son, oh boy, he has seven. He has six girls and one baby boy, is about three months old. Yes.

During my younger years, I had a first cousin [Annie Mae] that I loved so much. We had a close family. She was living in Eastern Pennsylvania, and she had four kids. She called me one day and she asked if I would take her kids. I said “Take your kids? What’s the matter?” I was working. I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “I just want you to make a promise that you’ll take my kids.” I said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll make the promise I’ll take the kids,” but not knowing that she was dying. So I was on the job [at Nadel’s, the book binder] and my mother called me and I felt funny, why’s my mother calling me at my job? And she said, “I want you to go to Pennsylvania.” What am I going to Pennsylvania for? She said, Annie Mae died. I guess that phone went one way and I went the other, because I couldn’t believe it. But at the same time—I’m ahead of myself—one of [Annie Mae’s] daughters was [already] living here [in NY] with one of my cousins. She was ten, yeah, ten years old. For some reason, two weeks before her mother passed, she wanted to go back home [to] Pennsylvania. So we took her back and she [is the one who] found her mother dead in the bed. And the little baby brother and the baby sister was playing all over the mother. [She tried to put water on her mother’s face. Couldn’t wake her up.] So she went downstairs, the ten year old went downstairs, and told the neighbors that she couldn’t wake her mother up. I had a[nother] cousin that lived over in Pennsylvania, so they said that somebody needed to be there to get the kids, cause [the authorities] would take the kids. We got there five minutes before they came to take the kids. So now I’m left with four kids, plus my one. But I had left my one here [in NY] with my cousin.

My mother said, “no you could do it, you could do it.” I was in my twenties. “Oh, you could do it, you could do it.” I said, “Lord, I don’t know, but I’m gonna do it.”
I did it. So somebody had to identify the body and I had to do that, me and my sister-in-law but she went to Pennsylvania ahead of me, but still since I was the next of kin, I had to, you know, call all the shots. So after we got everything together, I took those kids to North Atlanta to their grandmother, and the baby boy, he cried so pitiful, because they didn’t know the people in the South. So they only knew me because I used to go visit them all the time. The little boy, when we, my daughter and I—cause my cousin had brought my daughter down to the funeral—got ready to come back [to NY], the little boy was following the bus. So a couple of weeks later, I put my eleven-year-old daughter on the bus, told her to go get him—he was four—and so she left on the Friday night, she was back in New York on the Sunday morning with the little boy, and I raised him till he, you know, got grown.

But he went south, went back down south, got married, had four kids, and he died with lupus. The oldest son died with asthma. The two girls did well, they both went to school, finished school, went to college. And they—one that’s living down south, and the other one’s living across the street from me here. So it’s been a ride, but we survived. Yeah, and I just love them to death because they love me, they still think about the time—“you’ve been there for us,” you know? And they said they never been hungry, they never been ragg’ly, and I love to hear them say that.

NEVER HUNGRY

I had a boyfriend, [Robert Lee Campbell] he was so good. He had a business, a restaurant and meat market, and I guess that’s why they say they never went hungry. *laughing* Yeah, but he was really good. He told me don’t worry, you know, everything will be alright. And it did, until he died. And he died in ‘82. He had lung cancer. But see everybody’d grown at that time, so it wasn’t such a big problem.

[The kids still talk about that. “We never went hungry.”

I still try to figure out where all their beds were. They all stayed with me in the summer. House full of kids. His daughter, Rosette, was there too for a while. Her sons are basketball players. She still lives in Brooklyn.]

NADEL’S BOOKBINDING

I worked, I did bookbinding. Right there, Bridge Street and Myrtle Avenue. About 37 years. I went there young.

I did an album for Nikita Khrushchev. What they call a—you know those books that you put all your old pictures? It was a big business. From [Bridge Street], we moved right here on Johnson Street, cause they started doing MetroTech, so we had to come out of that building and come down here. Then after that, for some reason, they went out of business [in 98/99]. But you know I still talk to him, to the boss. *laughing* I called him and his wife—they’re Jewish—I call him and talk to him sometimes, and they keep saying, “Edna, why don’t you come see us?” But they live in Long Island, I don’t have no way of getting out there.

[I got that job because] I knew a friend that was working there, and they needed someone, and I didn’t know anything about bookbinding, but I was a fast learner. So I went there, I learned how to collate, I learned how to sew, and I learned how to make the books. I knew how to, you know, set up the type to put on the books and everything.

You had the machine, and then sometimes you had to do hands, that’s why my hands all messed up with the typing and the sewing. Sometimes you had to do hand-sewing as well. But mostly machine, it was very good, very interesting, really. We did work for the city, the state, for the libraries, the hospitals, and we did private business. And [for] the UN. And every year I used to get invited to the UN.

My boss would take me and for some reason. I was the only one on the job he would take. Every year. And I never seen so many different kinds of food in all days of my life. They would have a big party, dancing, everything.

And sometimes when they would come, from the UN, they would come straight over to me, and I said, “Well I’m not the boss, why are they coming to me?” So they said they wanted an order by a certain time. I would make the promise like I know what I’m talking about. But I would go to my boss and I say, “I made this promise that we’d get this job by a certain time.” I worked Saturdays, I worked Sundays, but got the job out.

Then I left that job for three years to help my friend in the meat market restaurant. And after he got sick, first he got—no, he got robbed, and somebody put him in a walk-in box, and from then on he went downhill. He kept going to the doctor. First he thought he had tuberculosis, but it wasn’t, it was lung cancer. So they gave him six months to live, so he had to find a place to put himself. Put him in a place in the Bronx. I forgot the name of the place but I see it on TV all the time. [It was a hospice. Hospice care. Calvary Hospital. He was there for about the time they said. They took the bed outside for a party on his birthday in June.]

After [he died] I called—cause they told me, if you ever need a job, just let us know—so I called and I told them that I needed a job, but there would only be one reason I’d come back, and he said “What?” I said, “With a raise.” He said, “You got it. I said I see you Monday.” And I went there until they went out of business.

Yeah, it was fun there. Like a family thing. And after my friend died, they came and got me, took me to their house just to relax. They said I needed to relax. I thought it was really nice of them. And their daughter, I went to their daughter’s wedding, you know, the women on one side, the men on the other. It was real nice. [And] his daughter was in my daughter’s wedding.

SENIOR GARDEN

[We have a garden] right there, next to the [Ingersoll Community] Center. We have a senior garden. We have the Chinese, and the Indians, we’re all out there together. And we have a good time. And at the end of the year we always have a party. And we have the party in here [in the Community Center].

We getting ready tomorrow to go to Manhattan to a garden conference. Every year someone wins a prize in the garden. I didn’t win anything this year, but I normally do. *laughing* But whoever wins, I’m happy.

Bunch of seniors out there laughing and talking and can’t hardly bend over. *laughing* One helps the other. And we have one man in that garden, one that helps, he’s all right, because he’s the only man that’s gonna go with us to tomorrow. We’ll meet here, they’ll pick us up, and take us to Manhattan.

All women. [We] went to an art show last week, week before last. One man. He said he didn’t know it was so much fun hanging out with a bunch of women.

I don’t know what it is—well, men, I don’t know, they all like to do a lot of things, but this man loves to garden. He also loves to go fishing. He’ll bring all of us some fish back, fresh fish, very good. Yeah, Mr. Pope. He’s good. Well he’s sickly too, but he’s out there. We all out there sick, but we out there. *laughing*

I do a little bit and sit down, do a little bit and sit down. And sometimes, like my asthma’s been bothering me, I’ll just sit and look, and sometimes I don’t even show up. It happens to quite a few of us, but different ailments. All of us don’t have the same thing, but we all got problems with the back and knee. *laughing*

OTHER PLACES

They said I have a herniated disc. That’s why I use the walker. Other than that, I just have let it go. I used to love to travel a lot, like a lot of cruises, going out of the country, I used to enjoy that. But I haven’t been out of the country now in about ten years. That’s because it’s a little hard getting around.

[I’ve been to] Jamaica, Venezuela, Aruba. Well, of course, Canada. I can’t even remember all of them. I visited quite a few. Oh, of course, Virgin Islands. I can’t even think of the name as good as I know it. Oh, Saint Thomas.

Oh, I’ve been to Hawaii too. One year was my birthday. I was treated just like a queen. That was fully nice. Because we went on a cruise while I was in Hawaii, and we just had so much fun. And I said, oh my God, and I said, if I wanna go another place, that’s a place I would love to go back.

NORTH CAROLINA CHILDHOOD

Growing up they call me Winky. You know, cause my eyes was so small, my mother used to call me Winky.

I grew up in North Carolina, finished school, and while I was there I was very popular, I was in a band, I was a majorette, I sang in the glee club. And I everything the teachers would say to do I was doing. I played basketball, played the baseball, softball it was. I was just into everything. And I still is. *laughing*

Also I was baptized at the age of 12. I’m a Baptist. And [I] sang in a choir—all that was fun.

And when I was in high school I worked in a little restaurant. I was so short I had to stand on a crate to ask people what they wanted. *laughing*

[For work], yeah, well they had cotton picking, stuff like that. I just wanted to experience that, but my mother didn’t want me to do it. She finally gave me a chance to do it. And then I don’t know, but my cousin, the kids’ mother that I was talking about, I couldn’t pick that cotton like [she could]. I used to get mad and lay on the bag, and she said, “Come on, come on.” I said, “I can’t do that!” But I did it for a while and then I get used to it. [I was 12/13. She’d give me some of cotton. So it looked like . . . I wasn’t doing nothing.] They spoiled me. *laughing*

CURTIS

I had one brother, and right now he lives in Jersey. And I was the baby so that made the difference. But we are very close. My brother and I, we call each other, and at the end of our conversation we’ll say, I love you, and that’s the way we end.

His name is Curtis. His wife died a few years ago, she was a sweet person, too. Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, that’s where he live. We were in the South, Thanksgiving of last year. And he came too. Him and his son. And we had a fun, he was going from house to house but I couldn’t do all that. It was too much.

DIFFERENT SOUNDS

Big difference! For one thing, it’s quiet [in the South], too quiet. Yes it’s a big difference. Yeah, quiet, quiet, quiet. You won’t hear nothing, at a certain time of night, you won’t hear nothing. But here, you hear something all night. All night, all day, it’s noisy.

But you know what, even the trucks and the stuff you hear all night, you get used to it, you go to sleep, you forget about it.

Well, you know what you don’t hear, at least I don’t hear all that shooting that used to be down here, that I don’t hear. But I hear there was a shooting last week, But I didn’t hear it, I don’t know why, I normally hear it, but I didn’t hear a thing. and that was right over there.

POLICE ACADEMY

I graduated from Police Academy, too. 2001, from the Police Academy [the Citizen’s Police program]. It was just something I wanted to know about.

[At the Police Academy they teach you] all the things that you need to know, you should know anyway. And then you have shooting the gun. Which is scary. But you don’t never shoot straight first if you don’t know what you’re doing. Then they take you, we went on a police ride in different neighborhoods. [That was after the graduation. We had to do a ride-along in different neighborhoods.] Oh my God, that was kind of scary though. We went into Marcy Houses. This man with his crazy self, standing there, you just got out of jail, why are you standing there drinking a beer? So he had a son out there, which he shouldn’t have.

We sitting in the police car. Oh my God, when they got out to talk to the guy, they arrested him. This little boy, he couldn’t have been no more than this high, *holds hand slightly above table height* start fighting the police about his daddy. I said, oh my God, now we in this car, and they cursing us out, and we don’t even know what’s going on. They have to call back up to get us out of the car, to take us to the street, take us out of the car, because they didn’t know what was going to go on. I said, oh no, I don’t want to be in this. Now that was scary, because you don’t know what they might have had in the park or what they were going to do, but we was safe, but we was safe.

I was telling some of the people it’s something that you should go and try to just learn. And it’s called Citizen’s Police. But I’m not going to arrest nobody, not going to try to arrest nobody. Just leave like it is. I’m not one of these crazy people. And you know we don’t carry no guns.

I think that the police, they should learn how to use their weapon a little different from how they’re using it, and I thought years ago, they were shooting to stop and not shooting to kill them, but that’s what they’re doing.

EVERY NATIONALITY

Maybe I’m different from most people, because I don’t care what color you are, I can get along with you. I don’t care what color you are, I don’t care where you came from, I can get along with you. I can have fun with you too. I don’t have far to go. That’s just me. I’m different from most people and I tell anybody that. First of all, I have said, going in there [the UN] oh, you’re hanging out with all nationalities. And I used to go there every year. And I really enjoyed every bit of it. Dance with them, enjoyed myself. So I can’t speak for everybody, I can only speak for myself.

I’ve had, well, even different nationalities when we have our parties here.

They come in, they eat, they have fun, too. There’s some good and bad in all nationalities, and I keep repeating that to people. Nobody is perfect. I don’t care where you came from. I don’t care what color you are. And we all bleed the same red blood.

My little great-grand, she lives in Texas. Now she’s the only black kid in her class. Have fun though, she have fun. They go what they call on “play dates.” It’s all in how you raise these kids. That’s the only way I see it.

GRANDMA, EAT HEALTHY

Well, that’s one thing I say about my grand-daughter, she check out school before she put her kids in it. Even when she was in Florida. And she’s getting ready to come back to New York with this little girl. I kept her one time for two months, this kid almost drove me crazy.*laughing* She said, Grandma, you know you have to eat healthy. And she look like a little beanpole. She’s sweet as she want to be, but she is smart. You hear what I tell you, she’s smart. A and B honor roll, her mother just sent me the [report] card on my phone. I’m just looking forward for this. I am looking forward for this kids to tell me how I’m supposed to eat. She’s nine now, yeah. And she told her mother the other day, “When are we going to New York? I’m ready now.” So I think they’re going to come next week.

And I’m praying that her mother is going to drive, that’s a long drive. But I told her just stay in a hotel one day, just come out another day. I hope that’s what she does. And she went from Florida to Texas, when she told me she made it, I said, oh Lord, thank you Jesus, because she take a chance. She take a chance. Her mother [Monica], she done work for the fire department, she was going for a lawyer, she went to Buffalo State, and all that snow up there, cold. She went to PS 67 Elementary School, she went from there to Sands Jr. high school, she graduated valedictorian out of that high school, Then she went to Martin Luther King High School, and Columbia University. She was going to high school at Columbia University the same time. So she could graduate from Columbia, it was a summer program, Then she went to Buffalo State.

I think she a lot like her mother. Well, she did good with her kids so far, because her daughter went to college as well, in Florida. And when her kids go somewhere, she move right along with them. And now everybody’s grown except this baby, so now she’s going to be coming back to New York.

I thought I was eating healthy enough. That’s what she say, you got to eat healthy. She don’t eat everything now, she love vegetables, she don’t eat everything. And she not drinking all that soda and stuff, she drink juice. Yeah, she tell you, not her! But I’m glad she’s that way. I’m glad she’s that way. That way you don’t eat a whole bunch of junk, and her mother don’t allow her to eat a lot of candy.

RIDE TO THE CASINO

Girl, I go out to dances, I come back to 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. I enjoy this life.

It hasn’t been that long ago I was out that long. I go to birthday parties and stuff. Yes, me and my Bentley be going. And you know what? On Access-A-Ride. Access-A-Ride pick me up and bring me back. When I leave my house, I lock one lock. When I go back, it’s just easy to unlock that one lock, get in, push that Bentley in and lock my door. Fine. And I said, thank you, Jesus, I made it in the house.

Thank God for Access-A-Ride, because I can go to five boroughs with Access-A-Ride, and I thank God for that.

I ride the bus, but I can also take Access-A-Ride shopping if I want to. I could go to Queens, I go to Staten Island, I go to the Bronx, Manhattan. So I love it. Even Access-A-Ride will take you to the gambling house, Resort World. In Queens.

I don’t really go a lot.

I used to go [to] Las Vegas every year. I don’t do that anymore either. Well, all of my friends that I used to go there with either moved away, or they in worse shape than I am. But I did speak yesterday when we were playing bingo, I said, who wants to go to Las Vegas? And then they said, oh, I want to go, but then you got some that don’t fly, so how you going?

Atlantic City’s not what it used to be. I used to get free rooms for there. But no. Then I can’t afford to waste money like that. I don’t have a job. When I had a job, [I was] getting a paycheck every week. I get a paycheck once a month now, that’s the difference.

PRAYING AND CONFIDING

I’m a Baptist. But I don’t go to church like I used to. But I still pray. I still thank God each and every day. But you could pray anywhere, you don’t have to be in a church to pray. But that was a part of my bringing up, that I had to go to church, I had to go to Sunday school, because other than that, in my mother’s house you couldn’t be hanging out in the street, you know, doing that. Uh-uh, no. Good bringing up. I got a few behind whippings when I didn’t listen, and I thank God for every one that she gave me. And before she died, she said she wishes she had seven kids like me. Yes, she did tell me that before she died. I could talk to my mother about anything. Sex, anything, I could talk to my mother about. And she said, are you crazy? Stuff like that.

She wouldn’t [make you feel ashamed for asking] and you know what? I had my kids the same way. I don’t care what it is, you could talk to me, you could tell me, I’m your best friend, and my mother used to always tell me that, I’m your best friend, and she wasn’t lying. That’s the truth. I loved that. My father was in my life, but not like my mother. But he was a good father, he was a supportive father, I’ll put it that way. In the summertime, I used to go spend the summertime with him and his wife. And she was good too.

GO AHEAD ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS, PLEASE

Like I said, my life was sweet, very sweet. I had little ups and downs with my husband, but I left that alone. When you see a problem, you leave it alone. And before he died, he apologized. He said, “you was a good wife.” He said, “everything I ever did to you wrong, I apologize.” I said, “listen, I been forgave you long time ago,” and I went on with my life. And I did. No, you don’t sit around and sob over nothing, you keep moving. You go ahead about your business, please. Life is too short.

I DON’T REGRET

I think about things I could’ve done, or what I should’ve done. Yes. But too late now. But, hey, it happened. I don’t regret anything.

I don’t regret, but I figure I could’ve went further in school. And I started, but then I had to pull myself back, because I had a child that I had to look out for. And a girl, you have to be very careful. Nowadays you gotta be careful with the boys. With just one, it’s just as bad as the other. No, but I’m happy. I’m still happy. I’ve done thank God I was able to get a job, to get at least decent—how do you say—retirement at this age, yes.

FRIENDS FOR LIFE

Well, I went to school in the South, so we just did basic studying, you know like math, science, stuff like that. To me, the education there is different from the one here, at that time.

The teachers just say, we need this done, I jump up and another friend of mine, name was Julia, we also sang in the church choir. [Julia and I were in Glee Club. We were Majorettes. She’s still down south. We were part of everything. ] We were just like this, the teacher said, do this, we were out. We had a broadcasting one time in school, and they said my voice and Julia’s voice was the loudest thing on the radio. *laughing* I wish there was someone who could tell you how we used to be. Oh my goodness. We were something else. But stayed out of trouble, stayed out of trouble.

Julia, we grew up together, but now, today, it’s—they is twins, Julia and Jeanette. Jeanette used to live here in New York. Julia never lived in New York. Jeanette and I became the closest friends. But I still talk to Julia. Jeanette and I are close. Right now, Jeanette is sick, so we talking on the phone. She just came out the hospital, but she moved back down to North Carolina, but we still close. We grew up from kids, and we still friends.

I mean, little kids, went to school together, and we’re still friends. You don’t find that.

I guess conversation and the fond connection that you have [is what keeps you close]. Because her husband died too, they separated young. You know, and one time she didn’t have a place, so she came to me. She was able to stay at my daughter’s place across the hall from me, until housing called her. [She moved over to Farragut]. And she was working for MetLife, so after she retired from MetLife, she moved back to North Carolina. But we still stay—when I go down there, I go to her. We have fun, we go out to dinner. She helped me to make her some candied yams.*laughing* She likes me to make that.

And her kids, they always respect me. Her son, her baby son, called me and let me know how she’s doing, she’s not eating, or she’s not doing that, and I call up and tell her that, “You know, you need to eat.” She said, “I can’t eat, the food has no taste.” I said, “It doesn’t have no taste with me either but I eat it anyway.” You know, she said she drank a lot of Ensure, I said, “You still need some food,” so she said she in bed. Girl, you better get up out of that bed and go in the street, you know, you getting weak in that bed. I said, “I hurt every day, but I go in the street every day, mostly anyway.” She said, “Yeah, but you always did that.” I said, “Yeah.” *laughing*

GOING VOTING 2018

My—I still call her my daughter—my cousin’s daughter, she live across the street from me. She said, I call you, I know you’re not in the street this early in the morning. I said, yes I am. Tuesday, election day, she called me, she said, you out already? I said, yeah, I’m going voting, because it’s supposed to rain, I don’t wanna be out in the rain. She said, Lord, I can’t do nothing but shake my head on you.

I have a friend who’s in a wheelchair. We came on out, left the house maybe about 7:30, got outta here maybe by a quarter to 8, went in there, voted, then I sit out there because one of my grandsons’ mothers came with her kids, so I kept them while she go vote, but she had problems back there [at the polling station], I didn’t have problems.

And then after that, I got home before the rain. I went home and made me some breakfast, and I was in the house the rest of the day.

And watching the TV. *laughing* Had me a ring-side seat, watching the TV.

WATCHING TOGETHER

You know what I do? Tell them [my friends] to turn to the channel so we watch [a program] together. You be in your house and I be in mine. Sometimes, like I call North Carolina, this thing comes on, “The Haves and Have Nots”. I call to North Carolina and have my friend, we watch that together. Or even sometimes, my friend, she doesn’t have cable, but we watch “Wheel of Fortune” or something together. Sometimes the news. She be on her phone, I be on my phone, I said “turn to channel 7, turn to channel 5,” and we stay on until whatever we’re watching is finished.

First time I had a TV was when I was living on Gates Avenue, and it was like a piece of furniture. The table of it had four legs and it was a black and white TV, but big TV.

At that time, I was busy watching cartoons. *laughing* Because I really didn’t, say, “work, work,” until I moved down here, because I wasn’t leaving my baby with everybody. Down here I was able to find a daycare to put her in, and I went to work, and I worked ever since. Then she grew up, [and] when school finished then she worked for the board of ed, my daughter.

RAISING KIDS IN PUBLIC HOUSING

It wasn’t easy raising kids, but you know, you talk to em and you push em a little bit, and they’ll come out all right, and I said to my daughter, aren’t you glad sometimes that . . . One time I got a fine. I sent her to the incinerator to put the garbage, and she set it down in front of the incinerator, instead of just putting it in there.

I spanked her behind, but she didn’t do it no more, because I had to pay five dollars. Five dollars was rough at that time. So she learnt from that day. You don’t do that, you put it down. If you can’t do it, you should’ve told me. Because people, you didn’t worry about roaches or rats or mice at that time, when they was burning the garbage, you didn’t worry about that. But now people—I really don’t have that problem now, but every once in a while I might see a roach. But you know I work on him right away. *laughing* You have to get that stuff when it first starts, and you don’t have that problem.

I’m just glad I’m living in this big city. Because to me, things that can happen here, doesn’t happen in the South. I never knew what public housing was until I came to New York. I never even seen a roach until I came to New York. That’s a big difference, I never saw those things. I’m just saying, how do you get these things? Why? I never seen those things in North Carolina. I’m sure now they probably have [roaches], because the people in New York took em there. But it never happened, never saw one.

9/11

I was in North Carolina at that time. And a friend of mine, Ms. Cooper, God bless her,, she had a office before this center came up, right there. She called me and she said, turn the TV on, they having a problem here, they blowing up the World Trade—so we turned the TV on and we saw it and, oh my God—

I thought it was the end of the world, that’s what I thought. So she called me down South, and we turned on the TV and we saw that—when we did see it, we saw the buildings coming down. So I said, oh Lord, now I’m supposed to be coming back to New York a couple of days after then. When I got back here, I couldn’t even come home the regular way. My daughter and her friend at the time, it’s her husband now, used to have to come a whole different way to pick me up from the train station.

And I still to this day believe Ms. Cooper, she died because she was out there handing them people coming from over there water. And that same granddaughter I’m talking about, in Texas, she was driving the ambulance over there. She said, grandma, they were putting [burnt people] in my ambulance. [My granddaughter was part of the 9/11 rescue efforts. She triaged firefighters and took them to nearby hospitals.] I said, girl, you sure you don’t need to go see somebody? Talk to somebody? She said, grandma, I’m all right. I said, you sure now, because you might need to talk to somebody if you saw all of that. Somebody took a picture, she got all that soot and stuff all over her, but so far, Thank God, she certainly be doing fine.

When I came home [to NY], I turned my air conditioner on, ooh, it smelled terrible. Smelled terrible. I went around spraying Lysol and stuff. I said, Lord, this stuff all in my air conditioner, so I took the air conditioner apart and tried to clean it. It was terrible, there was a bad smell, bad smell, I guess from the bottom, from everything else.

And a friend of mine, she calls me Ma Edna, she said the only reason she wasn’t in the building is her daughter wanted her to go with her to school that day. When, she said, when she came up out of the subway, the building was coming down.

I said, well you know what? God had other plans for you. Just because her—good thing she went with the child or she’d have been in that building. But I’m so glad that my granddaughter—I hate that she had to go through that, but at least she wasn’t in there. And they still haven’t found some of them people. Oh Lord.

DURING THE BLACKOUT

We cooked by the candlelight, we had steak and potatoes and some side of vegetables, and I had all of those kids, we had to walk up the steps, eight flights of steps.

Some of the people, they went outside, they put a grill on, and so their food wouldn’t go bad, they cooked the food and gave it to the people, yeah, gave it to the people. Yes, I remember that.

We had fun. We had some wine, not the kids, we had some wine.

BRIGHT LIGHTS

I had this thing here on my neck, which have growed back. They said it was fatty tissue. They did the surgery. I told them about me, everything, but [that] I had sleep apnea. My friend, Patricia Tanner, went with me to Woodhull. We had planned our day, what we were gonna do. After the surgery, we were gonna have lunch, we were gonna shop. So I went in and didn’t wake up. They said I stopped breathing fifteen plus minutes. That’s dead. Pat said that the man that came out asked who was she. She said, for some reason, she said she was my sister. So they took her in the back and I was all hooked up to the breathing machine and everything.

I was in the hospital a whole week on life support. So I got out of that part, and I went back to the clinic, so the doctor told me about what had happened. So I called Pat in, I said, Pat, come here, and let him tell you what he told me. And he told her the same thing. Fifteen plus minutes without breathing. That’s dead. But you know what? I saw—these [here] are no lights—I saw the most beautiful lights that you could ever see, and I never forget that. Beautiful lights. Bright lights. And he said it’s a good thing you didn’t go through them lights. I said, oh my God, I cannot believe that. He said, yes, that’s what happened. All because the anaesthesia they gave me could’ve been a little lighter if they’d known I had sleep apnea.

I mean [the lights were] brighter than daylight. Bright. Bright. It looked like it could’ve been a sunlight, but it was just so bright. So bright. That is something. Really something. But I pulled through that. Yes, I said, God wasn’t ready for me to go.

I don’t think [death is] something that you should be scared of, because you know you going one day. It just wasn’t my time. And I thank God it wasn’t my time. He has something else he wants me to do. And I’m gonna fulfill whatever it is, I’m gonna do it.

I’m thankful that all my kids and basically grandkids are grown. That’s a blessing for me. They can look out for themselves. Because I still play the mother, the father, the grandmother, and all that stuff. You know, if they need something, if I got it, they got it. That’s just the way I am.

I have looked for those bright lights just to see if I see any lights that bright. I have not found those lights. Only that time. Only that time. Yeah, and I never forget. Right now I don’t remember the date or nothing of that, but I remember when it happened. It was something. But they started [to] bring the tubes out a little bit at a time to see if I could breathe on my own, and then after I could breathe on my own, a couple of days later, they let me go home. And I kept right on going. Yeah, right on going. Like I said, I hurt each and every day. I have pains every day, especially my lower back, but I still go. Right now it start paining in my shoulder. Still go. But now I’ve got lumps in each breast. Like I say, I’ve been through a lot, but I’m still here.

Return

Marilyn Findlay

Interview Location: Citypoint Food Court
When: Fall 2018

FOUR FRIENDS


[At our school] all the teachers knew every one of us. James Baldwin wrote the school song. We had, I think she must have been, the first Black principal. She was a very stately lady, very dignified, and you know, she had to make a name for herself, so she wanted all her kids to succeed. We had Black teachers who also wanted the kids to succeed. Most of us, we did pretty well with our training that we got and the homes that we came from.

I met four girlfriends [there]. We went through elementary school, through high school. Then when we got to college, we all went different ways. Now, we get back together to celebrate our birthdays over at the Marriott at the airport. Every time one of us has a birthday, we celebrate.

[The Marriott] is near one of our friends who is the most incapacitated and then one comes from the Bronx and then one lives in Queens. I’m the oddball, and I still get around, so it’s not a problem for me, but the rest of them have a problem. We have two birthdays coming up. We’re all the same age but at different times during the year.

We have a big cake. We take pictures. We eat ice cream. Last time we had a birthday . . . Was that mine? I think that must have been mine.

HUSBANDS

[My friend Edith] had two husbands. Cynthia had two husbands. My sister had two husbands. One had three husbands.

When I got the divorce [from my first husband], I was awarded money. I never got a penny from him. I said, “I’m not going through that. I’m gonna work and take care of my own kid. I don’t have to ask him for anything.” Finally, I was at my mother’s house and said, “Well, I better go back and get my other 60 credits, so at least I have a [nursing] degree.” I worked on that at night and worked in the daytime.

I [had already done] 60 credits for pre-nursing. Then the second part I did after I got my divorce. I was still matriculated, so I didn’t have to pay. I went back and forth [between my mother’s and Brooklyn College]. Then I had friends, we would go out and party, whatnot. I had a couple of boyfriends. I got kind of wise, so that was a good period for me. I went to nursing school for a year and a half, maybe a little longer.

[Then I thought] why don’t I call the state and see if I could get a license to be an LPN. Sure enough, that’s when they first introduced the LPNs, sure enough I took the test. I got almost like a 98 or something like that, because I had more knowledge than the regular LPNs. I was able to get a job up there at Montefiore because it was not far away from Mt. Vernon, so I could get on the bus and just go to the job. I worked there for a while.

HOW I GOT FINDLAY

I used to go to church with my grandmother. I said, “You know, God. I’ve been a good girl and I want you to send me a good husband.” I don’t know how this happened, but my sister’s husband was a fireman, this is my third sister. She had a wedding, one of the girls who she worked with was getting married and her husband couldn’t go because he was on duty that night, so I said, you know what, I’ll go with you but I have to go to work tonight because I used to work night shift over a little private hospital next to the UN.


She said, okay and I met her and we came over to Brooklyn to this wedding. These guys start hitting on you and then this guy says, “Oh, where are you girls from?” We told them, “She’s from Manhattan, I’m from Westchester.” He said, “I’ll drive you home.” That was my husband. He didn’t know that I lived way up in Mt. Vernon. This was an afternoon wedding. He dropped my sister off, then he took me up to Westchester because I had to put on my uniform and everything. Then the next night he calls me and then the next night he called me and the next night. That turned into a romance.

Then, I wanted to get married. He didn’t want to get married. He lived with his mother. He had been in the Army, a playboy. I said, “Okay, if you don’t want to marry me, just forget about it. We’ll go our separate ways.” His mother got on it, “What happened to that nice girl you had?” His boss said, “What happened to that nice girl you had?” I guess he thought about it and he started calling me again, but I already had somebody lined up.

He grew on me, if there’s such a thing. He was very nice to me. That turned into a big romance. We went down to City Hall, got married. I told my father, I didn’t tell my family I was getting married. My dad said, “Why are you getting married again?” I said, “Dad, you don’t know these guys out here. All they want to do is screw you and leave you. They have no commitment or anything like that.” I met quite a few of those guys. [My family] finally took to him because he was nice to me, he’s very nice. We lived in his mother’s house. She threw her tenant out and gave us the apartment, and we moved in there.

In Bed Stuy. A basement apartment, very nice. She had a five-family.

[His name was] Jack Findlay. That’s how I got Findlay.

11 P.M.

My first husband, I named my son after him. But my son subsequently changed his name because he probably realized . . . Anyway, [now my son] calls me every night at 11 p.m. to see how I’m doing and I think he loves me. I have two beautiful granddaughters from him.

HOUSING

Jack and I soon moved out of the mother’s house. We bought our own house because as soon as I got my degree, I applied for a civil service job over at Kings County. That’s when they first started the Medicaid, so they had a lot of positions. I used to have to go when somebody was admitted to the hospital, go and see what their finances were and see if we could get money to pay the bill. I did that for a while. Then my father said to me . . . my father had retired from the railroad. The feds took over and he had over 30 years in and he could walk away.

They called it railroad retirement pension, which was later converted into social security for him. But he was too young not to work, so he went and got a job with the city, with housing at that time. They built this brand new project over by Columbia University on 125th Street. He got a job there as a teller and he said to me, his boss was a woman, and he said to me, why don’t you take the test for housing. He said you’ll be off every weekend and holidays and you get benefits and they’re teamsters. I’m a teamster. I said, oh okay. Meanwhile, my other sister who had been to all kinds of social work schools with all kinds of degrees had been working also with housing. They had what do you call, like an open house thing? They used to segregate tenants, applicants. I think they had to open up the ranks. What was happening, her unit had to go in and make peace between the whites and the Blacks because they had white projects and they had Black projects.

This was going back, let me see, ’40s, ’50s, I guess maybe the ’50s or ’60s because that’s when the civil rights actually started.

MATERNAL LINE

I think about what’s going on today with people looking down on people just because they just came into the country or they don’t want them in the country. I always suspected that my grandmother was a Native American, so I did the Genie thing, no it’s not Genie, it’s Ancestry. They told me that I was 20% Native American. But I had done the ancestry and they told me that by background as African-American and then Irish and English and something else. But I knew that my great-grandmother looked like a squaw. You know how you see those pictures? I said, I want to check that so my son on my birthday, he gave me a test to do. I did that and when I got that back, I said oh. I sort of knew. My mother never talked about her background, so we never knew what was going on with her and we never knew her father. We knew her brother, but not her father and she never talked about him. One of the things she did was, you know, after you retire, you can get a college degree at DC37, so she went through that school and she graduated from New Rochelle, the College of New Rochelle. She had written a paper, and I wish I had gotten that paper so I could see because my mother didn’t talk a lot about herself or her family. I guess she was so busy changing diapers for 8 children.

I said, I never wanted to do that [take care of 8 children]. I had my scares, and that’s why I always give to Planned Parenthood. I didn’t want to go through that. At that time, it wasn’t legal.

I guess, I didn’t want to be poor, first of all, and I didn’t want a whole bunch of kids. I saw my mother had one dress. My sister never forgave her because she didn’t come to her graduation, because my mother had no clothes. That was sad. That taught me a lesson. My grandmother, she was a domestic. She lived with us, and she would work from sunup to sun down and that helped my father pay the rent. We had a nice apartment, four bedrooms. They used to hang up awnings every summer because there was no air conditioning.

PASSINGS

[Jack and I,] we bought a house over in Lefferts Manor. He sold cars right down here at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, and he retired, the first thing he did was buy himself a new car. We got new cars every year because he just rolled over.

It wasn’t free but he just rolled over the note. The boss was very nice. It used to be Pepper and Potter and then Pepper left the firm and went to Florida and Potter stayed. His son went to the best colleges, you know they had lots of money. I remember going to the bar mitzvah for his son. They were nice people. My husband stayed there until he retired. He was there almost 40 years, he worked there 40 years. He developed diabetes. He had been in World War II. He didn’t take care of himself that much. I tried but he used to say to me, “If I can’t do what I want to do, what’s the sense?” Anyway, he didn’t suffer too much. Then my father passed away and that was devastating. My husband had died one week in October and my mother died the next week.

[My mother] was in a nursing home for about seven years. I was still working. She came to live with us because she was living with my sister in Queens before she moved down to Atlanta. My mother said, “I don’t want to go to Atlanta.” I said, “Well Ma, you know I’ve got this big house, you can come here and stay with me.” She stayed with me until she [got] sick. She had a stroke and that immediately incapacitated her. Then while she was in the hospital, they gave her some rice to eat, and she had another stroke. She couldn’t walk.

Anyway, she got to see her little granddaughter. My son took my oldest granddaughter to the hospital and she was smiling. Kai, I have a Kai and a Kia. Kai was running around the bed. Then on the holidays, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’d get an ambulance. I’d get an ambulance and bring her home for the day and take her back that night. I didn’t feel too bad because she would say to me, when am I going back home? To the nursing home, you know. That was okay.

I think toward the end they get dementia or something. I don’t know what the difference is between dementia and Alzheimer’s. I think Alzheimer’s works on your whole body. I think they’ve become a little advanced but I don’t think they know the cause [of Alzheimer’s], they better hurry up and find it before I get it.

PEEWEE


I lost two brothers, three brothers actually. One was a baby, like four years old and he had something wrong with his heart. He never grew. He was about four years old and he looked like was two. He wasn’t really sick but he wasn’t growing. One day, my mother and father took him to the hospital and they came home without him. Then they told us sit down in the living room. I’ll never forget that. They told us, we used to call him Peewee because he was small. “Peewee died, he’s not coming home.” We never knew, we were kids, we never knew what the condition was called or what happened or if they weren’t doing surgery at that time on babies, and if they told my mother and father when he was born that he wasn’t gonna make it. I don’t know. I never asked my mother, of course. But anyway, that was traumatic, that was really traumatic.

MY FATHER

I keep in touch with everybody because that’s how my father brought us up. His dream was to have a compound and have all his kids live there, but we all got our own brains, you know. That wouldn’t work.

My father was from North Carolina and his mother died when he was 10 and his father came to New York, I think he got a job, and then he sent for some of the kids. Then his big sister also . . . He was like, he wasn’t the baby, he was third or the second, he was the second. Then he had a sister and a brother. They looked out for each other. Like the rest of my family, when they came up from the South, they would help somebody else come up. They would get jobs and whatnot.

ON THE TRAIN GOING SOUTH

In the summertime . . . My father worked for the railroad, so we would get passes. I used to go down south every summer sometimes when I was younger with my aunt because once they got up here they would go back down there to see how the family was doing, just do a vacation.

That was during segregation and one time my father took my sister and I down south. When you came to the Mason Dixon line, that was Washington, they changed all the Black folks had to go in the back of the train where the coal dust came out. The conductor said to my father, “You and her can stay here, but that little one has to go.” That affected my sister. My father said, “That’s my daughter, and she’s not going any place.” I guess because my father and I were light. My sister sort of looks like my mother who evidently was part Indian and she had to go. Where was she going? She was little but she couldn’t sit with us because we looked like we were white. That’s how it was.

You know, I didn’t even hear it. I didn’t even hear it.

To this day, she remembers it. ANOTHER PART OF MY LIFE

I wanted to tell you about the other part of my life. I like to travel.

I have been to Las Vegas about 100 times. Then I hooked up with this guidance counselor who set up trips for the teachers, you know when they had their little vacations. That was right after I retired. This travel agent out of Boston that we traveled with, I travel with them even though Gladys, who was the guidance counselor, passed away. I was so happy that I hooked up with her after I retired. I have been to so many places in Europe.

The first trip I went with her was to Paris because I always wanted to go to Paris. We went to Paris, we had a nice trip. If she got 10 people, she got a free trip, Gladys got a free trip. I called her next year, Gladys, where are we going next year? We ended up going to so many places. Then on my own, after she passed away, I went to a lot of other places.

I always liked the Caribbean. I’ve been to quite a few islands there and I love Las Vegas.

I don’t throw my money away [inVegas]. There’s a lot to do there, people don’t realize. When they opened the shopping mall, oh my goodness, that was terrific.

When I go to Europe, I use this EF Travel Agency because they’re reasonable, it’s also educational. They plan tours for you. With them, I’ve been to Portugal, Spain, Italy, Brussels, that’s Amsterdam. Amsterdam, that’s the city. I went to see the Normandy place where he landed. I’ve been to England. My husband always wanted to [go] back [there] because he was in World War II on the beach. I always wanted to go back there even though he didn’t make the trip back.

My husband and I had a timeshare in Barbados. My next door neighbor her husband, his father was from there. Anyway, we went down to Barbados one time they were there and they were selling these timeshares on the beach. I said to my husband, “We have to buy one of these.” We kept that for 25 years.

Toward the end, I had to take my granddaughters, I took my sister, we took his brother and his girlfriend. After a while, you get tired. I like the Bahamas, we used to go to Freeport in the Bahamas, and then Paradise Island. I like Disney in Florida and California. When my sister lived in California, she used to drop me off when she went to work and I’d spend the whole day in Anaheim. Then she’d pick me up on the way home.

VEGAS VEGAS VEGAS

I used to go to Las Vegas every year, believe it or not. I’d find some group that was going. The first time I went with the Alpha Wives. I then went with my sister, the fireman’s wives. Then my girlfriend, I had a girlfriend who loved Las Vegas, we used to go. My neighbor loved Las Vegas, we used to go. Then my granddaughters, I introduced them to Las Vegas. Then my little boyfriend that I had after my husband died, I introduced him to Las Vegas. I would say, I don’t know, from the time that Bill Cosby became a star and after that.

Every time they opened a new hotel, I would go to it. But then, I used to take my granddaughters to the children’s hotel, Circus Circus. Then when they became teenagers, we moved over to Mandalay Bay where they had that shooting. Do you know we stayed in that same hotel? That was my favorite and I would go back there because it has the tram that goes through two other hotels and then you’re on the strip, and it’s so luxurious.

I don’t like to lose money. That’s the main thing. You don’t lose your money. If I play like $40 and lose money, that’s it. But some people are compulsive, but not me.

OTHER PLACES TO LIKE

I also liked Montreal, Canada. It’s a good trip and it’s not tiring. I was there the year before last, last year. I went by myself because the year before my sister and I had gone, they had a special, so we went. The next year she was having problems with her leg, so she didn’t want to go. I said all right, I’ll go by myself. I went by myself. I had a good time. Where else do I go? Aruba. Did we go to the Virgin Islands? I don’t remember.

My son took the grandkids [to Hawaii] and here they are standing at the foot of the volcano. I think it just erupted not too long ago. I called my granddaughter, I said, “Were you at that volcano?” She said, “No, we weren’t at that one.”

I like London because it’s similar to New York. This time we stayed at the original part of London, and that’s the financial section. It was hard for me to get around because we were staying here and where I like to go is over here. The tour guide picks the hotels and they’re nice hotels but I like to be where everything is. Anyway, I always have a good time there. I don’t know how long I can travel because sitting on that plane . . .

A CRUISE WITH BETTY

After my husband died, my girlfriend next door, she says, “We’re going on a cruise.” I said, “Yeah? Where are we going?” Anyway, where did we go? That’s another place I went. I can’t think of the name of it, but I saw an eclipse there. I was walking on the beach and it got very dark. I said, “What’s happening?” They said, “It’s an eclipse.” Like it was nothing. I forgot the name of that place. I tried to keep a little book and I always send myself a postcard back so I know the date and whatever, and how long it takes. Now, our mail is longer than theirs. It’s terrible. You should see the problem we have in my building now. They took our good mailman and now we get mail [at] 8:00, sometimes the next day. They supposed to sort it out but they don’t. We get mail from all over downtown Brooklyn.

The cruise, okay, the cruise ship. My girlfriend, she was another wonder. She took dance lessons and ice skating lessons, she did everything. Betty. She had twins. I called them, they were my first grandkids. She divorced her husband. Anyway, she’s the first one I called when my husband died. She had the car, she took me over to the hospital to pick up his things and whatnot. She was very cool. I was sorry when she died. She died about four years ago. Anyway, this dance group was gonna be on the cruise. I didn’t know anybody. I don’t think she knew anybody either. They had these big tables where you go to eat and I didn’t like that because at that time my hearing . . . Big tables, like 20 people, I couldn’t hear them across the way. I had to keep asking them, what did they say? What did they say? And I don’t like water. Even though I had to pass swimming at Brooklyn College. The woman said to me, “Ward,” the teacher [said], “If you get across that pool, I’ll pass you.” I said, “Okay, I’m gonna jump in but you hold that stick in case I get ready to drown.” Anyway, I passed. I back-shouldered across the pool.

That was the cruise, very nice. We took pictures with the captain. I didn’t go near the rail, I was so frightened. So, I never liked cruises. But I used to like to see the cruise ships come into Nassau. They were like 10 stories high and I’m saying, oh wow. But they were having problems. People come back sick and all that kind of stuff.

THE OPERATION

Oh, I was gonna tell you about my operation.

Let’s see now, that was right after I retired, come to think of it. Right after I retired. My face kept getting paralyzed, and I kept going to the doctor and I said to him, “Something is wrong and I don’t want this to go up to my eye.” I told him “I’ve been to the dentist and the dentist told me I better get a C scan because it wasn’t my teeth.”

It was like progressing from the jawline up. I insisted. I said, “Listen, you have to send me for a C scan.” They sent me for the C scan, and I had this doctor out in Brooklyn. I never go to Brooklyn doctors because they don’t know. He asked me, “Is anybody in your family mentally ill?” I said, “Yeah, they’re all crazy, but what does that got to do with me?” I was sick of him. I came back to my doctor, I said, “Now, you’ve got to think of something else, some other kind of x-ray.” Because they didn’t see anything on the C scan.

I think I went for an MRI and they saw like the tumor.

They told me that women in their 60s, they notice it more. Anyway, he called me in. The neurologist called me in and as I’m walking in the door I said, “Yeah, I know. I’ve got a brain tumor.” He said, “Yeah, you’ve got a brain tumor, but the good part . . .” I said, “Good part?” He said, “It’s not malignant.” I thought to myself it should have . . . It was so traumatic. I was ready to jump out the window. When I saw how my face looked like all twisted, because the tumor was growing on the auditory nerve and the facial nerve was also damaged. That’s why when you see pictures, I don’t take good pictures. It looks like you had a stroke and every time I go to somebody, a doctor, if they don’t look at the record, they ask me if I had a stroke. I said, “No, I didn’t have a stroke. I had an acoustic neuroma.”

Neuroma. I was beside myself. My sister who lived in Atlanta did . . . Everybody, if something happens to one of us, we all do research. My sister in Atlanta found this acoustic neuroma association down in Atlanta and she got information. There was a support group in New Jersey and they were starting one in New York, so of course, I went. I had to learn all about how you treat yourself. Your eye is affected. The balance is off because that’s on that same nerve. Trigeminal, that’s what they call it, the trigeminal nerve has all those functions. We found other people in the area that had the same thing at different hospitals. We all got together and we used to meet like once a month or once every two months. We found we had common problems, some had different problems than the others. It’s been very helpful for me in my life now. I stopped going to some of the meetings now because I’ve got so much to do, I can’t.

I went back once for an x-ray and the doctor found only scar tissue. But I’ve still got the symptoms, you know, the balance [issues]. If I run fast, walk fast, I could fall down. And I did have a falling problem because your balance is off with that nerve. Trigeminal.

HEARING

I lost the hearing altogether. Now, the other ear started to go, so I’ve got a problem with that one. The latest is they’re doing . . . They’re implanting a little thing back here, so you can hear without the hearing aid. The hearing aids are a pain in the neck. They cost like four grand, three grand. Then you’ve got to buy batteries. Every week you have to change the battery. Then you got to change the mold, that costs about $150 every couple of months. You know, you survive because you got to.

First I said, I’m not gonna do it because I don’t know what the cost is. Ridiculous. I’m not gonna spend a lot of money. She told me this was the hearing aid that construction workers use. We’ll see. It’s still experimental and they do children. I didn’t even know that Medicare would pay for it. December 6 they have a meeting. We always meet at NYU down on First Avenue. They’re having speakers from the company that does the hearing aid apparatus thing, so we’ll see. But sometimes, I don’t know . . . Then if I have sinus problems. If I have a bad day like now, the trees are coming down, and the allergies are bad. That also impairs the hearing, so the hearing aid doesn’t work that well. I’ve got three, what do call it, three levels I can use. Hopefully, maybe I’ll die before I . . .

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

I decided to move down here.

That was after living in my own house with my own washing machine and my dishwasher.

It’s almost 20 years in October.

I was in the house [in Lefferts Manor] by myself [after my husband dies]. There were so many memories, so many good times. My husband used to cook, we used to have parties, family would come, my sisters and brothers would come and stay, the grandchildren. I said, “I can’t stay here. I cannot stay here.” Every time you heard a creak, or some wretched person came to the door, I have to peep out the window to see who it was before I even showed my face at the door. So I said, “I’m going.” All the furniture that we had is stuff that we had made like 20 years ago before. I said, “I don’t have to have any of it.” I gave it all away. I kept maybe a television and some of my clothes. What happened is, it wasn’t even on the market and somebody came and saw it and they wanted it through a broker. I already got a broker. I didn’t know he had cancer. At the closing, this couple came. Of course, they came the night before. I didn’t want to know about them.

They came and did the walk through the night before the closing. They wanted to bring their stuff. I said, oh boy. I wanted to have as little as possible to do with them, because it was traumatic to me. I’d start crying and what not. I called my brother. I said, “Listen these people want to bring their stuff here tonight.” My brother said, “No way, no way.” He was going to the closing with me the next day. We did the closing and everything worked out.

Then they wanted to move right away. I didn’t have any place to go. One of my girlfriends out in Queens, she said, “You can come and stay with me, I’m in my house all by myself.” Then she scared me to death because she used to feed the cats and sometimes leave the door open. In St. Albans, you don’t do that. That was scary. Anyway, I stayed with her for a while and I traveled back and forth because I still had my mailbox here. Finally, I came down here. I was looking around, actually. Then the broker who sold the house sent me to some creepy apartment across from Prospect Park that was so dark and dreary I said, “I may as well be dead. I’m not coming here.”

I said let me come down here because they always had ads in the paper and they had just converted to co-op. They had a nice apartment on the third floor, two-bedroom, two-bath and the price was right, and I took it out of the house money. At least, I’ll have a stake in case they raise the rent every time they do a lease in an apartment. I’ll have some kind of stability. My husband and I always said we wanted to move downtown if we left the house because he liked Juniors. He used to eat lunch there every day and come home stoned every night. I’m only kidding.

Anyway, they told me they had this apartment and they were fixing it up. They were kind of slow but I had some place to stay at my friend’s house, so I didn’t worry about it. It was a holiday I think, and I had stayed two nights when the Marriott first opened, they had a special. I went there for two nights. Then my girlfriend came and got me because she was going to Washington. I lost my discount at the hotel. When I called about the bill, they said, “You didn’t keep your three nights.” Can you beat that? I left before.

I was mad.

I went down to Washington. We stayed there for the holiday and then came back. I had to keep bugging these people, they’re so slow, but that’s why it’s reasonable.

Finally, I got the date. My lawyer at the union did the closing free. My brother came with me again and I got the keys. I moved in, no furniture. You should see the house now, it’s so junky. I can’t move around. I did have an organizer come in last summer because she called me this summer, and she helped me get rid of old papers. I had to bring all the records from the house and the sale and my mother’s papers, my husband’s papers, the cars, the insurance, all that stuff. Finally, we cleaned up a lot of the bags that I had. She called me again this summer but it was so hot, I just couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. That’s where I am. I’ve got to call the shredder again. I’ve got all these papers and junk mail.

LIVING DOWN HERE

When I first moved here, we were protesting Barclays, the stadium. I used to go to the rallies because I knew it would change the neighborhood. That was already done just like this [Citypoint] was already done. What happened, they did tell us that they were gonna build and block our views. I could see all the way over to the fireworks, now I can’t. I’ve just got a little narrow view. Some people left because they moved here, there was nothing around us, and it cut off their views. But anyway, I said, what are you gonna do? I have about let me see, one, two, three, four, about five buildings. I’m the back, so I don’t care. It didn’t bother me. Some people it bothered, though. But what could we do?

The subway station is ridiculous. I can’t go out in the morning because of rush hour, so my doctor’s appointments have to be like after 10:00. The platforms are crowded. But they did open up the next exit over here, which is good.

REMEMBERING 9/11

I had gotten up, I had retired, I had gotten up early to drink my coffee and watch TV. I always watched the news. I’m sitting there watching my TV and all of a sudden I see this plane hit this building.

First thing I said . . . I picked up the phone to call my sister in California and I said, “They’re bombing us.” Then I tried to call her back and the line went dead. Then the second plane came. That smoke lasted for weeks. I had to keep the windows closed. I’ve probably still got dust in there in the walls that I don’t even know about. It was terrible, it was awful. Then the people were walking. I didn’t go outside. The people were walking across the bridge. The next day I did see, they had set up tables to give them water, the people who were walking. That was terrible. I used to work across the street from City Hall at 250 Broadway. That was one of my favorite places to go because my bank is there and that shopping. Century 21, when they first opened, that was my favorite store.

I had a mailbox there and they moved me down to 34th Street. I guess that what kept me from breathing all that stuff. They moved the [mailboxes].

I had been there the night before. They used to do concerts down there and I used to take my grandkids. We used to love to go in the basement there. My husband and I used to love to go upstairs. They had a nice bar upstairs. We’d do that on a Friday or Saturday night. You could park the car downstairs in that basement. They also had a bomb in the basement [in ‘93]. . .

THAT’S MY LIFE IN A NUTSHELL

But anyway, I’m not leaving New York because I was born here. “Thanksgiving, my sister and I go to Juniors—no dishes. We’re the only two that are really left in the city.”

Return

Yvonne Bodrick

Interview location: Pratt Institute, Myrtle Hall Conference Room
When: Fall 2018

BROOKLYN TO BROOKLYN


When I came to the neighborhood it was a completely different neighborhood. I was born in Brooklyn, born and raised in Brooklyn, Bed Stuy area of Brooklyn, so I was sort of familiar with the neighborhood because I attended college and we had classes in the vicinity. We were bused over to this area for classes. We used to go to the restaurants in the neighborhood and always admired [it]. I remember saying to a friend once, “I would love to live in this neighborhood. I like it. It’s quaint. It’s a little different.” At that time I was living in Crown Heights. And then it came another point in my life, when I started looking for a place to move and invest, and it just happened to be this neighborhood. Clinton Hill Co-ops. That was around in 1985.

AROUND MYRTLE

They were located on Dekalb Avenue, the restaurants I’m referring to. One was Two Steps Down. Another one was Cellars and there was another, [an] Italian restaurant, but I can not remember the name of it. It was right across the street from Two Steps Down. There was a lot of little restaurants in the neighborhood, not as many as there are now. Definitely, I don’t remember any on Myrtle Avenue, other than maybe Kentucky Fried Chicken and White Castle. There was a diner on the corner of Myrtle and Vanderbilt, which is now where Chase Bank is. There was a nice diner there. It was a quaint neighborhood, but it was going through changes. It was borderlining. It could go this way or that way. At one point I was afraid about my investment, because I didn’t know what was gonna happen, but it turned out for the better, and I’m glad it did.

There was a time when [the neighborhood] was really scary. You would hear gunshots coming from the park, Fort Greene Park. Even walking late at night on Myrtle Avenue was kind of dangerous. It was really dark and it was a little dangerous at that time, but it was just a matter of being careful. I mean anywhere you go in Brooklyn can be dangerous now, really. Anywhere you go, for that matter. But back then it was . . . it seemed to be a little more treacherous. You didn’t wanna be out too late at night, by yourself, definitely. Now it’s a little different. You have more lights on the street that help.

I always thought [Pratt] was protected, because there was always security. Because I’m between Pratt and Saint Joseph’s college, it gave me a sense of security. It really did. I’ve felt this sense of security being between the two colleges.

WORKING IN A BLIZZARD




I worked all my life. I have been working since I was like 11 years old. I used to babysit, I used to sew. Oh gosh, and I remember I had a job working as a person who would stand outside and watch the clothing. It was Dekalb Avenue, but further down, all the way down near Throop, and there was at that time . . . I was maybe 12 years old. There was stores, they used to have stores with clothing outside. It was a shopping strip. I went into a store one day, and I say, “I’m looking for a job.” And the man said, “Well, I don’t have any job that I think that you can do. Oh, but you could stand outside and watch the clothing. Make sure no one steals anything.” So I had that job and I didn’t keep it too long, because it was mainly on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. It got very cold when I was standing outside. One day I went it was snowing and it turned out to be a blizzard.

The man who owned this store, he was in the store, by the heater and I was standing outside, freezing and I kept saying, “Well, can I come inside and warm up?” “Oh just stand out there.” And he left me standing out there, and I was so cold and I just walked away. I just left, because it was getting dark outside, he wasn’t letting me in and I was freezing. My feet was cold and I had to walk like . . . I don’t know, 10, 12 blocks to get home, ’cause at that time, we lived in Bed Stuy.

It was a [long cold] walk to get home, and my feet was freezing. And when I got home, I could look through the window and see everybody in the house looking comfortable, watching TV. Cozy and warm, and I’m so cold I could barely tap on the window.

It was a sorry story. I remember going back [later] saying, “I wanna get paid.” [And he did pay me.]

THE WINTER COAT

When I was babysitting I saved up my money to buy a sewing machine and I went to the pawn shop and I bought a sewing machine. I taught myself how to sew. I was like 13 when I made my first winter coat, and it was corduroy. It was a green corduroy coat, but I used a pattern. It was a robe, it had a shawl collar, and it wrapped and it had a belt, and I figured I can do that. So then after that, I started sewing for other people.

I had adults asking me to make things for them and it got kind of complicated. I remember a lady gave me a pattern. It was a suit, and it was a double breasted suit, and then she had this plaid fabric. It was like boxes and checks, and that was first experience of me trying to put together a jacket that was double breasted with plaid. So things had to match up and I had such a time with that. It didn’t come out too well, because of the complexity of the pattern and the material.

[When I was 14, 15] I did get working papers, and then I was able to get an official job. I worked with a temporary agency. I went to a vocational high school, you went through a series of all the different trades, I wanted to do sewing so that was my thing, fashion design.

We did this co-op [work] . . . You work part of the day and you go to school part of the day, and we worked for this owner of a factory, and he also had a boutique. It was [at] a shopping district on Fulton near Nostrand Avenue. But he [also] had a factory space, where you make the clothes. He was so strict, he was like, “Rip that out. That’s not good. Rip that out.” I did learn some things from the experience, but he turned me off to the whole idea of working in the fashion field.

“If this is what it’s gonna be like, I don’t wanna do this.” [That’s what] I was telling my teacher at the time. Miss Smith was her name [and] she said, “I’m gonna refer you to this person” Actually this [person turned out to be her] brother-in-law. “I want you to call him, so you’re gonna make an appointment with him and maybe he could help you.” I met with him and just talked with him, and explained to him what was going on in my life in terms of what I wanna do and don’t wanna do. He said, “I’m gonna refer you to somebody else.” He gave me a number to call and he told me, “Let me know how this turns out.”

So I called the number, and I spoke with the lady, and she made an appointment with me to meet with her. Her name was Miss Dinkins, and she was at Regal Paper Corporation. This was the name of the spot and it was on 35th and Madison. So I got an appointment to meet with her, and when I met with her, she was the head of [the] personnel department, and this was back in 1967 [I think]. She offered me a job for the summer, so I accepted and when this summer came, I started working.

I worked in the file department, which was in a big, big room with file cabinets going all the way up to the ceiling. There was no windows, and it was just me and an elderly woman. She was a very gentle teacher. She was very mild mannered, but it was a lot of work. Back then, the paper was like tissue paper, ’cause you had carbon copies at that time.

So you had this carbon paper to make your copies, and it was like onion paper then. So [there were] these files, all the way all the way up, in alphabetical order for different departments and it was the whole wall all the way around, and it was just me and her, all day, just filing, filing. I learned how to file, beautifully.

When school started back, my last year of school, I was back to the sewing again. But I felt, “I have a job coming to the summer, because they offered me a job for the [next] summer.” Miss Dinkins said, “When you graduate, if you want a job, you got a job here.” She just loved me, and I loved her too. She was such a nice person. So the next summer I worked again, and then I was supposed to graduate. Instead of that June, I was graduating in September, because I had to take a summer class.

I had a job lined up for me when I graduated from high school, but I was pregnant, so I didn’t wanna go back, ’cause I was pregnant and baby was due in October, November.

I called Miss Dinkins to let her know. She was such a sweetheart. “Oh well, you still have a job here if you want it. So whenever you’re ready, if you’re ready to work and come back, just call me. I’ll have a job for you.”

The baby was born, my daughter, and about a week or two after that, I was ready to go to work. So I called, I said, “I had the baby.” “What was it?” “It was a girl and I’m ready to go to work.” “You sure you’re ready?” I’m like, “I’m ready.” I was ready, but my body wasn’t ready. So I went to work and we got everything together, my hours, 9:00 to 5:00. I used to get on the train . . . It was the middle of November and the weather was getting colder and colder. Long story short, I got very ill. I got like, pneumonia-ill and I wasn’t able to go to work for a good two months, but she held the job for me.

When I got back she offered me a job in the personnel office as a clerical worker, and it was great, ’cause I had my own little office. No windows, but it was my own little office and they were teaching me the skills, office skills. So we signed a contract to send me to secretarial school, which was Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School.

That was Eugenie S. Dinkins and I remember the name so well, because I kept some of the paperwork. I keep things. I have folders at home, file cabinets. I keep some things that have meaning to me. I was looking for her at one point, and I couldn’t find her, Miss Dinkins, ‘cause I always wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much. She played a really important role in my life. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know if I’d have gone to college [later].

KATHERINE GIBBS SECRETARIAL SCHOOL

It was very high class type of a school. Back then—this was in ’69—back in ’69 there was a dress code. I’m in personnel, so there was really a dress code there. And back then, it was secretary, not administrative assistant, it was called secretary. And you had your nails and you had to have the hair in place. That’s how they taught you how to be a secretary. You know, to cater to the boss, et cetera.

The women there were like from all over the world, and everyone there just about had blonde hair and blue eyes, and I was the only black female. When I say black—in my complexion. Maybe there was a person that was black, but she didn’t look like she was black. So I dealt with a lot of discrimination. I dealt with that when I went to work at Regal Paper Corporation also, because I was the only other black person there. [Maybe there] was somebody who worked in the mail room, and maybe there was one janitor, but the person didn’t look black. They were like, maybe Hispanic. I don’t know. So I was put in that environment. I felt very discriminated [against], and I felt very out of place, but that’s how it was at that time.

It’s like almost like being invisible. A lot of just dismissing you. [At] Katherine Gibbs, it was like nobody spoke to me. When I went into the ladies room, everybody just walked out, like I didn’t belong there. But it was an experience. It was really, I just felt ostracized, I just was like, “Well, I’m here. And, wow, I’m here.” It was like, I’m the only one here, but I learned a lot from the experience. It was just an interesting experience, but it was very hard. It was very hard and difficult.

So the job, Miss Dinkins . . . I was working in the personnel department, her office, the main office. I had a side office. Then another lady moved in to another office next door. I can’t remember her name, but she gave me hell. She really didn’t like me. And she hated the fact that Miss Dinkins liked me, but I was very fortunate that Miss Dinkins liked me, because she protected me.

[Then] Miss Dinkins got a promotion and she was being transferred to North Carolina, to headquarters. [And] that person didn’t like me, got Miss Dinkins’s position. I was in hell after that. I had signed a contract when I went to the school, Katherine Gibbs, they were paying for it, but if I was to leave the job before that program was over or if I left within a year, I would have to pay that tuition back that was paid for me to attend. So I couldn’t deal with the person who took her position. One day she said something very rude to me, and I couldn’t take it no more, and I just exploded.

I didn’t lash out to hit her, but verbally I gave her my Brooklyn attitude, and it wasn’t nice. It all came out of me and everybody heard it and came running. I was screaming and yelling at her and saying all the things that I didn’t like that she had been treating me bad, and I quit. Before I got fired, I quit. So I had to pay back that [money for Katherine Gibbs].

MS DINKINS ASKS ABOUT MY FUTURE

Before that, Miss Dinkins, like I said, she was a beautiful person. And she was always, “How you doing, Yvonne, fine? How’s everything going on in your life? How’s your daughter?” She was always concerned about me and my daughter, so we would sit and talk. “Well, what is it that you would like to do now, what’s going on in your life?” Katherine Gibbs was making me more interested in going back to school, wanting more. So I said, “I want to go back to school. I wanna go to college.” So she was like, “That’s something.” I said, “But my parents said that they can’t afford to send me to college. So I just forgot about that.” So she said, “Let me look into something. I’ll get back to you.”

This was during my time there, which was like maybe a year and a half I worked there. She did get back to me and she said, “This is a number. I want you to call this person and see if you can get an appointment with her.” And I did. It was one of her sorority sisters. So I met this person and she was at the City Universities. It was 42nd Street and when I went to her, I met her and she was like, “I need you to fill out some paperwork, so when you come, make sure you have at least an hour to spend. An hour, maybe more, it might take.” So when I got there I was filling out all these papers, and I’m like, “What is all this about?” And she was like, “Well, I was told that you were interested in going to college. These are application papers.” There was a lot. I kept filling out papers, filling out, signing this and filling out, signing. She said, “Well, you’ll hear from us. It might be a couple of months, but you’ll hear.”

Matter of fact, I forgot about it. It was so many months that went by. I wasn’t even thinking about it. When I got a postcard in the mail—this is after I left the corporation and all and I resigned—it said, “Medgar Evers College.”

COLLEGE TO CETA TO COLLEGE

I remember not doing well in school, because I couldn’t get focused. All the time, finances, finances. I would try to get temporary work in between, when we had breaks or summer breaks or whenever. I remember taking a leave of absence from school for a year, and I got a job with the CETA program.

CETA program was back in the days when Lindsay was the Mayor of New York and the government was having a funding problem. The people [city workers] were being laid off and fired because the city funds were cut and they were sliding the CETA workers into these jobs, and it was terrible. It was like we were coming in and they were going out. They were like, “Who are you?” These people had been working in jobs for 50 years, were losing their jobs, it was horrible. We were coming in, all young and bouncy, and taking over these jobs. Well, not taking over the jobs, but the positions.

I got a job with the Department of Probation. It was at 2 Lafayette, right close to Brooklyn Bridge. I was working at the administrative office of the probation department, where they had the commissioner of probation. They’d have these like official meetings, and the secretary of the probation office, I was working beside her, she was getting up in age, and she was talking about retiring.

She loved me, and she wanted me to learn her job and she could just slide me into her position. She felt good about it. The commissioner liked me. Come on let’s do this. And I was like, “Nah, I wanna go back to school.” I didn’t take the job. Done, missed out. I missed out. It was like 1974, ’75.

I went back to college and eventually I graduated from college, and then I’m looking for a job. I changed my major, I went from secretarial to business administration and then psychology.

PSYCHOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY

I took a class and I met a classmate, and we became friends. Her major was psychology and we would talk about life and things, and that just interested me, because I’d found my passion. I was looking for my passion. This sewing wasn’t it. I thought business would be it. Even though I had a little boutique and my parents helped me to get that storefront on Franklin, selling clothing, old stuff and new stuff. Then I found out, no I don’t wanna do this. I was finding out what I didn’t wanna do. I did a lot of things, I thought, “No, this is not what I wanna do.” So we were having these conversations about personalities, ourselves and stuff like that. It sort of interests me, and I’m like, “Wow, this . . . I like this.” So my major turned out to be psychology and my minor sociology. And so that’s what I got my BA in psychology. I graduated in ’78 and I’m looking for a job related to psychology, but all I could find was, I found a job in the college, doing administrative assistance, secretary again.

So I did that for a year, and I’m like, “Here I am stuck again as a secretary. This is not what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get out of this and get a job, doing something I wanna do.” So I said, “You know what? I’m gonna go to Kings County Hospital and I’m gonna do volunteer work in psychiatry. Something in psychiatry.” I would go Saturday and Sunday and I would put in a couple of hours, so when I got in, they would let me in with a big key and lock me in, on the ward, and I’d work with the activity therapists.

A position became available, and they informed me, “Yvonne, there’s a position available for a mental health assistant. Why don’t you put in for the position. It’s not a permanent position, but you might get some experience from that.” I said, “Okay, but I’ll need a reference.” “Don’t worry about that. We’ll be your reference. You’re good.” So I put in for the position. I got the position. It was a provisional position that’s what it was. It wasn’t permanent, it was provisional they said. They stressed that, because it means you didn’t take an exam for this job, so you might be bumped at any time from this position. So I said, “Well, I need something more secure than this, but I’ll do this until I can get something more permanent.”

I stayed there five years.

I went from inpatient to outpatient within the five years that I was working there. I went to adult inpatient, and that was rough. I was working with social workers. It was really rough.

I got burnt out. So I took the exam [for hospital] care investigator, and I passed that exam. Basically working with patient accounts. I was fortunate enough to get picked up by Kings County Hospital, again.

CARE INVESTIGATOR

So it was basically working with patient accounts and you’re following up with patients, once they’re admitted into the hospital to find out . . . Bottom line is, “Do you have medical coverage to pay your hospital bill?” That’s what it all boils down to. This time I wasn’t restricted to psychiatry. I was all over the hospital, because if someone came into the hospital, we would get a case immediately. Once you come into the hospital and you’re admitted, you have a record and a case. Now the job of hospital care investigator is [to] work with different departments to follow up with the patient to make sure that they have insurance to cover the hospital bill.

Now, you go and see the patient, the patient could be well or ill and you have to wait ’til the patient get better or maybe a family member comes. Maybe the patient dies.

[If] the patient dies, you still have to follow that patient up. Which might [mean] . . . you have to go to the morgue to find out if anybody claimed the body.

NEAR DEATH

At first I was going, “I gotta go to the morgue? Oh my goodness. I don’t wanna go to the morgue.” I went in to see a John Doe. They pulled the body out and it’s a slab, [but I also saw] the little babies, that’s wrapped up like in little cocoons and stacked on top of each other. I got to see all of that. Still birth, or the preemies who didn’t make it, or abandoned babies that died. They’d just be wrapped up and waiting to be either buried or taken away [by] . . . a family member or whatever, but in the meantime they were wrapped like cocoons. I got to see all of that. I got to see dead bodies. I got to see a partial autopsy. I was saying, “Wow, I’m seeing all of this stuff.” It was like, okay I think I’ve seen it all.

I saw patients, ’cause back in the early ’80s, AIDS was just coming out and we would get a lot of patients with AIDS, a lot of them didn’t have insurance and they were dying. So you would see them one week and the next week they were gone. And all of a sudden it was just like, boom it’s AIDS. They’re calling it AIDS. And then they were isolating these people. If they said, “Oh the patient had AIDS.” Everybody would like jump back. Like it was contagious, they would isolate these patients. That was terrible. It was really sad. You’d see people, [the] look in their eyes. I was scared, ’cause I’d been like . . . I’m not saying I’m getting desensitized, but I was getting . . . not numb, but I was just getting like, not depressed. I can’t even describe the feeling I was having. It was a sadness, like what is the world coming to type of a feeling. I was like “I’ve gotta get out of this environment.”

GETTING THE BUDGET DONE

A lot of people were struggling. I was struggling. I’m always struggling. I’m struggling financially myself, but I’m working. I was like, now my daughter’s turning 18, I’m going through that. Life, you know. So as soon as she turned 18, and she graduated from high school, I was like, “I’m gonna make a change in my life now, because before I was working to support myself and my daughter, now I’m at this point now, I’m working to support myself.”

One day a lady on the job, one of my coworker friends, she was saying, “I got all these bills. I’m going somewhere and I’m gonna get my budget done, ’cause I’ve gotta get my bills consolidated. I gotta do something.” So she went to this place Budgeting Credit Counseling Service and she was telling me about, “Oh yeah, they’re gonna consolidate my bills, they’re gonna do . . .” I’m like, “That’s an interesting place. That sounds so interesting. Let me have their card.” So I took the card. She thought I was talking about my bills. I was talking about looking for a job there.

After 11 years of Kings County Hospital, I left to go to Manhattan to work. That was Fifth Avenue, Union Square area. Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. It was one of those offices with again, executive, you had a dress code, you had this. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I’m back to this again.” But I loved the work, working with the people and helping people resolve their debt problems. Getting to the point, well if they had to do bankruptcy, then we will prepare them for bankruptcy.

But mostly our job was to prepare them to do the debt management program, where they consolidated all their bills and make one monthly payment to this company, and we would pay their bills for a certain [period] . . . The budget that we set up for them would be either a two year plan . . . up to a five year plan and we would help them to get outta debt, to control their financial problem. It worked out for a lot of people. It really did, especially when it came to the student loans.

This was in the ’90s.

Student loans were a big issue with a lot of these people that were in debt. I saw doctors, I saw lawyers, I saw professionals. Most of the problems was with the student loan, because there’s no way you can bankrupt the student loan. You can do some kind of a payment arrangement, if you were not in default, but a lot of people were in default with the student loans, and we negotiate to get them out of default with a payment plan, but if they messed up with that, that was it. They would get their paychecks garnished and stuff like that. It was serious.

So that sparked my interest in student loans. I mean doctors and lawyers, these professionals were like living this lifestyle that was all a sham. Driving expensive cars, but were up to their nose in getting out of the student loan debt. And they were paying high interest on these things because their credit was messed up. So they had these things, but they were paying very high interest to have these things.

I did that for a year and a half. Like I said, that sparked my interest in student loans. I was going back to school to do a masters degree. But I was like . . . ’cause I was always wanting to go back to school, but I thought I wanted to do it in social work, but I changed my mind. So I was like, “I got all of these skills in my head. What do I wanna do a masters degree in? I wanna go back to school, but what?” So one day it just hit me.

WHAT JACK OF ALL TRADES MEANS

It was an old saying my mother used to say, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” So I was like, “And what?” So it hit me one day: counseling. Everything that you do, basically revolves around counseling. So I said, “I’m gonna go to LIU.” ’Cause I could walk there. I could walk home from there. Leave work, go there and then walk home. I was taking one class for one semester, one class, so I could pay for that. So I was paying out of pocket. While I was in class, one particular class, that was The World of Work, we had a project. Everybody in the class was going to do a presentation about a particular field or job or something like that. So I said, “I’m gonna keep mine simple. I’ll just do mine on what I do. I’ll do mine on budgeting credit counseling as counselor.” Perfect.

When I went to do my presentation, I had everybody’s attention. I got an A in the class. At the end of that presentation, I had students coming to me all during the semester, asking me questions about the credit counseling. I gave out a lot of business cards.

One young lady in the class, she was always talking with me about the credit counseling and whatnot. I said, “Yeah, I like it. I love the job, but I’m getting tired of that. I really don’t like the management and I would like to do something different.” So one day she told me after class, she said, “You know, they have a part time job at the college in the financial aid office. You might be interested.”

AT THE FINANCIAL AID OFFICE

So I got the job with financial aid office, part-time and I loved it. I loved talking with the students. I loved helping the students and whatnot. But I found a lot of the students didn’t wanna hear what I had to say when I was like,”If you don’t have to do the loan, don’t do it. Maybe you can do this, that and the other.” They were like, “Nah, I’m gonna get the loan.” I’m like, “You sure, because maybe you didn’t . . .” “I think I’d better get the loan.” Because LIU is very expensive. It’s another private institution and it’s very expensive. Especially the students who were taking pharmacy, ‘cause they had the pharmacy major there. Very expensive. But just a regular undergrad. I don’t understand why, but students were coming there for undergrad, undecided about their major. This is not the place to be undecided when you’re paying $1000 per credit. At that time, so it’s much more now.

And they were, “Okay, I wanna do a loan.” So what my focus was helping them to do the financial aid application to get them a package for financial aid, to see what they’re gonna get for their award.

So I did a lot of talking there and working with students, and I liked the staff. I decided I would stay at LIU, in ’95 when I graduated with my masters degree in counseling. They offered me a full-time position and so I just accepted it. I was happy there until I retired in 2009, but I was losing my love for the office. Not the work, but the office in 2008, 2007.

FAMILY: 11 OF US

I have a large family. I come from a large family.

There was 11 of us.

I have an older brother and an older sister, and then myself and then there was eight under me. So I was always—I can say—raising children, ’cause my parents had their own business. It was Mom and Pop’s Shop, a restaurant and they worked [at] together. The restaurant was in Prospect Heights area. They were in that business for like forever, before I was born. They moved from a smaller spot to a larger spot. They cooked soul food and they were popular in the neighborhood. They did good business in the neighborhood, but they had a lot of children. I was the only one in my family to attend college. I was first in my family, and the only one in my family to attend college, and that was because of my desire, and my drive. there was always something behind or something that motivated me to help myself. In the same token, I was always trying to help my younger siblings, because my older brother, he got married and he moved out and my older sister, she got married and she moved out. They got out and there was now me and my younger brothers and sisters. Going to school and trying to help them, help my parents to take care of them. If I want the things I want, I have to get out here and go to work and get those things. That was my motivating factor. It was always like, “That’s interesting over there. I’ll go and try that.” If I think it was gonna help, but it helped myself and helped others. It wasn’t always about just me.

SHORT RETIREMENT

This year 2019, it will be 10 years I retired. Yeah, it’s been 10 years.

[At first] it was relaxing and [I was] seeing my neighborhood in a different light, because now I’m not rushing to work and rushing to . . . I walk and I can see things, but it was like I was seeing it in a different light now, more relaxed. “Wow, my neighborhood looks great. Look at this, I’m seeing a change. I can appreciate it.”

I took a class at BRIC. I took a few classes. Editing, studio production, field production. I did that for a while. I wasn’t too good at editing. I did one project I completed, one project. I helped others to complete their project, but actually did one project. I never did do a show. I just did one project and I completed that. I had a lot of help to get that done and I was like, “I don’t know if I wanna do that right now. Let me try to do something different, ’cause this is not paying anything.” And I needed some extra money, because my dad bought some property [in South Carolina] and he divided it up and gave me a couple of acres of land. I wanted to put a trailer on it, which I did, so I needed money . . .

NAVY YARD SECURITY

I was looking for a part-time job and I wanted to be in the neighborhood, so I went around looking and looking where am I gonna work. So the Navy Yard seemed interesting, because they have Steiner Studio. And so, maybe I can get something in Steiner Studio. It was funny, because I was standing outside the gate, waiting for people to come in and out to ask if they were hiring, ’cause I found that was the best way to find a job. They was like, “Go online. You’ll find a job if you go online and you don’t see anything.” So I’m like, “If I find somebody maybe I can network my way in.” I networked my way in to meeting one of the assistant directors of employment services, that they have inside of the Navy Yard. That was like, “Wow, how did that happen?” But that’s who I met. He gave me his business card and told me to call and make an appointment with my resume, or either fax my resume in. So I emailed my resume in, got an appointment. But he said the only thing that was available was security. I’m like, “Security? I don’t know. That’s the only thing available and I’m desperate, I could use it really now. Well, I’ll try it.” But he said it was only on the weekends on a Saturday night. I said, “At night? Okay, I’ll do this, ’cause this is something that’s immediate.”

This was in 2011. I worked in security, in the Navy Yard, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night. Overnight.

It was such an experience. The first night, just staying awake all night was the hardest thing. It was so hard to keep my eyes open all night. To get through that weekend it was tough, but I made it through. It was tough the first month, but after that I was able to get through.

I was determined. This is gonna ruin my social life, but I said I needed the money, so I did it, and I did it. They helped me to get the security license. The agreement was, once they pay for everything. If you quit within that year, you had to pay all of that money back that they put out for you to get your license. So I was determined to make it through that year, even though it wasn’t that much money, but still I made an agreement with myself that I was gonna stick it out.

Halfway through I was like, “I don’t know . . . This, no.” [But] it wasn’t bad though. It wasn’t bad at all. It was good benefits. It was just the staying up all night, walking around the yard. I know that Navy Yard . . .

SHOWING UP

When I have a job, I show up. There was a storm one night. It was a really bad snow storm and everything was shut down. Transportation and everything. The trains, the buses, everything was shut down for this big storm. Since I lived two blocks away, I could walk, so I said, “Well, I’m gonna try to make it, but if the wind is blowing so hard it’s blowing me back, I’m gonna turn around and come home.” But I made it. When I got there, it was only myself and another guy who showed up. There was only two of us. And the night supervisor, he stayed, ’cause the other night supervisor didn’t show up. So there was three of us to man the yard that night. But there was a police car outside of the yard, and a police car inside of the yard and that was it.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

The things that I’ve seen, I [know] the Navy Yard inside out. It’s a magnificent place and it’s getting even better.

They put more buildings up since I left. Building 92, the museum. When they finished that building I was working there and I’ve always wanted to work that building, because it would be better than walking the yard. So sure enough, I was assigned to the building on Friday nights, and I’d have the building to myself before it was open to the public. I could go from the top floor to the bottom floor. I’d do the search from the top to the bottom. I’d do that like every hour. I reported everything is okay, and I’d check the grounds around the building and go back in the building.

I remember when they opened that building up, but I had already been from the top floor to the bottom floor and I know everything in the building. During that year that I was there, it was the summer, it was 2011 they decided to take a picture of the staff of the Navy Yard. It was during the day. They let everybody know, the night workers too, that they wanted you to be present to take the picture, to be in the picture of the staff of the Navy Yard. Not everybody showed up, but mostly everybody showed up. We took this big picture and they had this photographer on the roof.

That picture is in the museum. It just so happened that day [they took that picture], I put on my full uniform [including glow vest], ’cause at night I was used to putting on the glow vest. So there I am with my orange and yellow vest. If you see the picture, look for the person with the orange and yellow vest on, ’cause I think I’m the only one wearing it. That’s me.

I remember taking my granddaughter, Jordan, to the museum in the Navy Yard. I took her up, I think it’s on the second or the third floor. I was looking for the picture, I couldn’t remember . . . I hadn’t been there in a while. I said, “I know it’s still in here. I don’t think they’ve moved it.” And they didn’t move it. It’s still there. And I was saying to her, “Look on the picture, see if you can find me in the picture.” She found me with all the people.

I have two granddaughters. Kyrima and Jordan. They’re in Brooklyn. I don’t get to see them as much as I would like to, but they’re in walking distance-but they have their life. They’re busy all the time.

KEEP CHANTING




I’ve been practicing [Buddhism since] maybe May of 2001. I think it always has been in my life, but I didn’t recognize it, because I was always in tune to my inner being. That’s where my strength comes from. Meeting all the challenges. I always saw myself as taking the lemons that was thrown at me and turning [them] into lemonade. I always felt that it was that strength. Even though, sometimes in my head I was like “Life is not even worth living. It’s always a struggle. Why am I suffering so much?”

It seemed like [Buddhism] was introduced to me a couple of times, in strange ways. That’s another story but . . . That’s another book.

[Finally] it was Linda who persuaded me to actually, “Go ahead, get your Gohonzon so you can chant, you’ll have it at home and you’ll be able to chant [at] home when you want to. You’ll have your own, personal Gohonzon and you can do this on your own.” She was the one that got me to eventually make my commitment to practicing Buddhism. It’s been what, it’ll be 18 years next year, in May. [I practice Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism There’s many different Buddhist practices. This is it for me.]

I’m so glad about it, because it just enlightened me even more, that’s how I can put it, ’cause the Buddhist is basically an enlightened person. That’s simply what it is. So it’s really been an adventure. It’s been really good. All the challenges that I’m going through in my life, I was like, “Wow, there’s a purpose behind everything.” Every time I can share that with somebody I do.

Return

Isabella Lee

Interview Location: TA office at 132 Carlton Avenue
When: January 2019

TENANTS VOICE

I am the president of Walt Whitman Tenant Association, which I am the spokesperson for the residents of Whitman Houses. In Whitman Housing, there are 32 buildings, and I have 1655 apartments.

I’m always going to meetings, trying to make things better for my development. I also do pantry for this community. For Christmas, I do the toy drive with my kids. I give away toys. I get coats from New York Cares and give them to the people in the community, so it’s a lot that I do.

WORK, PAID AND UNPAID

Thirteen years since I retired from my job.

First I worked as a student loan officer with Chemical Bank. Then I moved onto the Bank of New York where I was a tax administrator.

I went to an agency back in the late ’60s, early ’70s, they had a lot of agencies. The agency was American Girl Agency and they always sent you to banks to work. I worked in a number of banks. If the agency sent you to a bank to work, and then they keep you more than 18 months, they have to either let you go or hire you permanently, so that’s how I got hired at Chemical Bank as a student loan officer and I worked there for 15 years as a student loan officer. Then the Bank of New York was looking for tax administrators, so I went and did the interview at the Bank of New York and I worked for the Bank of New York for 14 years as a tax administrator before I retired.

I got paid at the banks. I don’t get paid [at the Tenants Association]. This is a non-paying position that I’m doing now.

I get to meet the mayor, the governors. I mean they all know me. Governor Cuomo, the mayor, the council people. I get to meet all of the people and then we have retreats. I’m going to Albany next month. We go to Albany every year for a retreat and it is a good experience and then, working all your life, it’s hard to just stay home and do nothing.

I go and I gather information. I bring it back. I have a meeting every month with my residents and I bring all the information back to them and let them know what’s going on.

Right now we have contractors here working on the roof and brick work. I get a lot of complaints from the residents about things just going on in the apartments like the contractors are putting holes in their roof and when it rains, it rains in their apartments, and they got mold and mildew behind this work. So, any complaints that the residents have, they always come to me first and then I go to the manager. Then, if the manager don’t help me, then I go to 250 Broadway, I go over the head of the manager. I fight for my residents.

MOVING FROM THE SOUTH

I moved here in Whitman in 1973. When I moved here, it was a lot different because when I first moved here, the El [the elevated train]. . . Let’s see, I have a picture. [The picture] was taken on the corner of North Portland and Myrtle, that’s that picture.

I was born and raised in South Carolina. I came here when I was 19 years old in 1967. I first lived in Bed Stuy. I moved to Whitman Housing in ’73. At the time, Whitman and Ingersoll was one development. It wasn’t Whitman and Ingersoll, it was Fort Greene Houses.

When I moved, there was a lot going on. First I was afraid to come into a development because you would hear all kinds of rumors about what goes on in developments. I was afraid coming from the South, and my family used to always say, you know what? Just be aware of the city slickers because they say people in New York are very slick. So, my mother used to worry about me a lot. I said don’t worry ’cause I’m determined to do what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna make things work out. I didn’t know anybody but my brother . . . I had a brother here, so I lived with my brother for a short period of time. Then I got my own place and I’ve been on my own ever since.

But it was something coming to New York and seeing all the bright lights and things because in the South, when the sun goes down, that’s it. But it was just hard working in the South and I was just determined to leave the South, never to go back there to live because I didn’t like living in the South.

WHAT WRITING A CHECK MEANS

Like in the South, there was no 8–4, 9–5, it was sunup to sun down. So, whatever time the sun came up, you were out in the fields working. I picked cotton. I did tobacco. I did . . . You name it, I did it. Picked tomatoes, dug potatoes. I did it all and it was for like $3 a day. It wasn’t no hourly pay. It was $3 a day. That’s what you got and then I used to babysit and I used to tell my mother when they used to write checks . . . I used to see the people writing checks and I told my mother, I said one day, I’m determined, I’m gonna have a bank account and I’m gonna write a check. It was my determination to do that, I came to New York, got me a job, got me a bank account. I sent my mother a check. I said I told you I’m gonna be writing checks. I wrote her a check and I sent a check to my mother.

Yes, I was determined. Yes, I was determined I would one day have a bank account because that was my [goal].

NORTH, SOUTH

You couldn’t ride in the front seat of the car, there was . . . It was hard in the South because . . . I don’t know why we were so hated as being black. I mean I couldn’t . . . I had . . . because the color of my skin, it was really . . . And I never went to school. . . I never had a white teacher. I never went to school with white kids because we were not integrated when I was there. I had graduated before they got integrated.

And it was hard. We were in the country. Wooded areas.

There was no[thing] . . . Then the store was far. You couldn’t really walk to the store. You had to drive. That’s why everybody in the South mostly have cars because you can’t just . . . Well, now, they building up a little better but when I was there, you had to walk to the store or get a ride to the store because there were no stores close by. Then only on Saturday, we got a chance to go downtown, which they had about 10 stores in my hometown, what we called downtown, and we would get in the back of the pickup truck and we would go downtown.

I’d look forward because just getting out of the country and going downtown and I remember they had no name brand stuff at that time. We had . . . We used to call them, the sneakers, they were 25 cents for a pair of sneakers but now they call them Skippies.

And I had an uncle. My uncle used to walk so fast and he used to chew his tobacco and he would look back and spit. So one day, the police stopped him and said, “Mister, where you going so fast? Why you walking so fast?” He said, “You think I’m fast.” He said, “I’m not fast.” He said, “I got a brother that could cut off the lights, take off his pants, get into bed before the room gets dark.” They told my uncle, said, “Mister, go ahead about your business.” He was fast.

Yes, but raised up in the South, it was hard. It was really, really hard and I said if I ever have kids, they would never have to do the work that I did in the South.

9 SIBLINGS’ HOME

There were nine of us.
There were five girls and four boys, yes.
I’m number three from the top.
I’m the third child.

Well, we were right behind one another. We were like two years apart, all of us. So, we basically was doing the same thing. My oldest brother, he passed away like eight years ago, he passed away.

He was the one that was in New York. He worked for York College. He passed away but my other siblings, believe it or not, except for one brother, they’re still in the South. They keep telling me well, I should come. I said I can’t. I mean I could go home but right now, I call this home ‘cause I lived in New York more than I lived in the South. But my sister said, oh no, this is still your home no matter how long you’ve been gone. This is home. But I can only stay there like two days. I cannot stay there. That’s how much I hated it that, when I go there, after two days I’m ready to leave because it’s so dark still and everybody want to go to bed and turn off their lights when the sun goes down and I’m not used to that anymore. I can look out my window and see lights and people all night long here but you can’t do that in the South, not where I’m from. I’m from a small town, Dillon, South Carolina.

GHOSTS

I mean I’ve seen ghosts. I’ve seen a ghost in the South.

My friend and I, we were going to the club. So, they had this big house, it was a milk dairy where they do milk, do the cows and I milked cows also. I’ve done that too. So, we were going and all of a sudden, you know when there’s a ghost around it feels like your hair is standing up on your head. So, it stopped us in our tracks and this woman and a man floated right across in front of us. We just stood there and watched but we couldn’t move. It was like you were frozen. Right across in front of us, up the steps of the house and when they went . . . When they disappeared into the door, that’s when we could move. So, we ran to the club and dropped on the floor and was telling everybody we had just seen the ghost and that was scary.

It was a man and a woman holding hands.

She had on a long white . . . Like she was in a wedding dress and he had on like a tuxedo. I’ll never forget, never forget.

We told the people in the club what we had just seen but see, that was nothing . . . In the South, it’s normal to see a ghost.

Yeah. It’s nothing really . . . It was my first time seeing it. I have heard them before but . . . ’Cause one day I was in a car with my boyfriend and then we were sitting in my front yard. So, I heard these footsteps. So, I said, “what is that,” and I knew what it was because the hair . . . it feel like your hair is standing on top of your head. I said oh . . . My boyfriend kept saying “look back, you won’t be scared no more. Look back.” I said “no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” I wouldn’t look back, and the footsteps kept . . . It’s like when it got to the car, they stopped. So, I told him let’s go. We left. When he would turn a curve, you would hear something slide in the backseat. He kept saying “look back.” I said “no.” So, I went down in the seat like this *crouching down* in the front seat ‘cause I didn’t want to see what was in the backseat of the car, but he kept telling me to look back, and I wouldn’t be scared no more — but, no. No way. I didn’t want to see. Whatever it was, I did not want to see it.

That’s why I believe in ghosts because I’ve seen it and I know it to be true. I know it to be true.

MOTHER and FATHER

My mother, my father. God bless both of them. They were very hard workers. My father was a deacon in the church, of course, and we sang on the choir but very hard workers. They were very . . . As a matter of fact, I have never heard my parents say a curse word. I never heard them argue or anything. So, when my mother and father separated, it was kind of . . . It messed me up but I never said anything ‘cause I couldn’t understand why. Why they separated. I never heard them argue. I never seen them fight. So, what happened? Why did they separate? I must have been about 14, just about 14.

My mother never talked about it too much. She was very quiet. She was a very quiet person. She still never said anything . . . Never said anything bad about him. She just said we just got to work and just make things work. But we had to work harder because now we gotta help mama, so we had to work harder but we made it.

HAUNTING HORSE

here was a hill right across in front of the house and every day at sundown, this horse would come down the hill but once he got at the bottom of the hill, he would just disappear. He would come *neighing sound* down the hill. They used to bury the dead horses back in the woods over there, so I guess that one particularly didn’t want to stay buried, so he would come trotting down that hill every afternoon after the sun go down.

They can’t rest because why would they, [the ghosts] keep coming back and what are they looking for or there’s something they wanted to do, they didn’t do. I never really thought about it that much because I guess I felt because you’re in the country these things are normal to see, so I never really thought about it but I wonder if it’s a soul that couldn’t rest. But that’s a horse I’m talking about. What about the horse? He couldn’t rest either? What happened with the horse?

BEING BLACK

And at the corner of the road, there was a big white building. It was called the White Hat. There was a boss man’s building there. So, the building was condemned but there were lights would come on in the building. There was no electricity. The building was condemned. It was like a shell of a building but at night you would see lights inside that building. Amazing. Amazing and do you know, right now, when I go to South Carolina, he never really tore that building down. The frame of that building is still there.

Yeah, you’d be scared. Yeah, you don’t want to go there because to me he was the meanest . . . Well, we call them the boss man, [Walter Beathay] so, we lived on his plantation but he was one of the meanest guys I thought, in the world. That was another reason I wanted to get away from there. I just couldn’t take him because he treated you really bad, being black and all. And I look at it today ‘cause you couldn’t get in the front seat, you had to get in the back seat. We couldn’t go into the front door of their house, you had to go to the back . . . Go around to the back door. It was a lot of things that you couldn’t do by the color of your skin. So, I look at it this way now: I talk to my friends now and I say, you know what? I was being chauffeured. He was chauffeuring me. ‘Cause I couldn’t get in the front seat, I got in the back seat, so he was my chauffeur.

But we, as people, we never hated them. I have no hatred in me for nobody, even though if there should be hate, it should come from the black man but I don’t know anybody that hate . . . We never hated anybody, and we couldn’t understand why we was being hated like we were because we can’t help because our skin is darker but why do you hate us so much? I mean we all bleed . . . You cut us, we gonna bleed red. The blood is always red, so being hated the way we was hated in the South, to this day, I still can’t understand it.

BANK OF NEW YORK

I think there’s some [racism] wherever you go but it’s not as bad because when I worked and when I went to the Bank of New York, as a matter of fact, how I got there, they had to hire some minorities because they didn’t have any, so they had to. This was 198- . . . Was it ’83 or ’86. I gotta look back. They had to hire some minorities and I happen to be one of those people and when I first got there, I felt really, really, really strange because at the Bank of New York, the guys there I worked with, they were all white guys, which it didn’t bother me but it bothered a couple of them because my skin color. [I felt like a fly in a bowl of milk.] hey had to deal with it but there was one guy, he was very, very friendly. He used to try to help me out because when I first went there, they didn’t have computer. Computer wasn’t out then, so we had to do it manually, the taxes by hand. So, those guys . . . and they felt that tax administrators should be men, no women. That’s how they felt at the Bank of New York, back in the ’80s. So, we got a computer, so we all had to learn the computer because the computer was a new thing, and we were so used to doing it manually, by hand. So that was an experience.

But the more I did it, the more I liked it, and I said, “wow, look at me now. I used to work in the fields back home, now I’m in the bank.”

When the boss saw [my coworker] Steve helping me, he told Steve—because they really wanted me to not to get the job so they can get rid of me, but Steve was making sure that I had everything—So, the boss told him “if I catch you helping her again, I’m gonna let you go.” But he still helped me—the boss never knew— to make sure that I kept my job.

Steve. He was just a friend. He never tried to get fresh or anything like that. He just wanted to see that I made it. That I did not lose my job because he knew I needed my job, so he would do things and then he would sneak it to me . . . I wonder sometimes . . . I think about Steve sometimes, I wonder where is he today.

9/11

I was at [Bank of New York] 1 Wall Street. I had to run for my life that day. I saw the second plane go in. I had just got in . . . ’cause I worked from . . . We had a choice to work from 8 to 4, 8:30 to 4:30, 9 to 5 or 10 to 6. We could choose our hours. So, I’m an early person, of course. So, I chose from 8 to 4. So, I was in my office and my boss . . . Well, we were always on first name basis. We never say Mister or Misses. We would always call each other by their first name. So, I’m in my office here. World Trade Center is over there. My boss, John, is over there. So, I turned on . . . I heard . . . I didn’t see the first plane, but I heard it when it hit and then I’m looking out the window. Then I see the smoke and the fire, so I ran over and I said, “John.” I said, “The World Trade Center is on fire.” He said, “What?” Then he came to my office. So, we both were looking out the window in my office. So, we stood there for a minute. Then he went back to his office. I sat down and turned on the computer and I saw this plane coming.

I said, “Wait a minute, that plane is flying too low.” Then all of a sudden, the plane sped up and went right into the World Trade Center. Then I said, “Oh my god!” I said, “John!” Then I said, “The World . . . The plane just went into the World Trade Center.” He said, “What?” Then he came back to my office. We watched it where you can see the tail of the plane still hanging out. We [watched] for a minute, [then] I grabbed my bag. He said, “Where are you going?” I said, “I don’t know but I’m getting out of here.” They told us to go down in the basement. I said, “I’m not going in nobody’s basement. I’m getting out of here.” But one of my coworkers ran past the World Trade Center. As he was running past, there’s a person jumped out the window and their head burst open on the sidewalk, so he had to go see a psychiatrist for a while and we couldn’t go back over there for, I think, like almost a month. We had to go . . . But we had to report, so we had to go to uptown and we just sat in the auditorium and they tried to talk to us about what we had seen and things that had happened.

That was a day that I’ll never forget, and the smell, oh my god, the smell. You can never describe the smell of a dead body. I don’t even know what . . .

There was bloody papers flying and we were running down ‘cause we came back down this way. We ran back over to Water Street to go to the bridge because none of the stores would not even let us in. We tried . . . We knocked on the door, they wouldn’t let us in. The cell phone wasn’t working. My family was calling me from down South to see if I was okay. The cell phone wasn’t working and we just ran . . . We just ran over the bridge. So, when we were coming over the bridge, that’s when the building collapsed, oh my god and we thought it was a bomb, like a bomb because there were people . . . I mean there were no trains working. I mean it was just a day that I never want to go through it again but when we got to the end of the bridge up here, the fire department was up here. They had given us water and towels because I was completely covered with soot. When I got to my building at 81 North Portland, the building with the people were outside said “we thought you were dead.” I mean everybody was crying because they knew I was over there.

So, I’m still fighting. I got a lawsuit in. I don’t know why my lawyer’s taking so long ’cause some people got paid already but I’m still waiting.

They’re still telling people if you were over there, you could still call. It’s not too late to call. They put a number on TV every day. If you were over there or near there, it’s not too late to call to get a settlement.

We couldn’t go back in the building ’cause they had the clean the buildings because there were body parts and . . . As a matter of fact, not too long ago, they still found something . . . Some bones or something on top of one of the buildings over there but the Bank of New York is no longer there. I don’t know what is there now. They were building something . . . ’Cause I don’t even like going over there. I don’t like taking the train anymore. People said I do not go down there ‘cause I get flashbacks when I go, so I don’t like going even over there.

I said one day I’m gonna do it [and see the memorial] but not yet.

[After a month] we had to go back to the building. We had to go back.

Except for the young man that was seeing a psychiatrist, that saw when the person jumped out . . . We don’t know why he ran that way? Why would you go past a building . . . I guess he didn’t expect to see anything like that but we all came the other way.

EDUCATIONS I

I went to a business school and I learned to type and I learned filing. They teach you how to file and type and I passed that. Used to be called RCA Business School.

Because see, in the South, typing wasn’t . . . We didn’t have to learn to type in the South and that’s something I wanted to do. So, I would watch TV and then you would see all these opportunities come up. And I saw . . . When I saw RCA Business, I called up.

Like I said, I was determined and I tell everybody, you can do whatever you want as long as you make your mind up. You can do it. All you gotta do is say “I’m gonna do this” and you stick to it and you can get it done. I believe that.

I didn’t let nothing get in my way. I didn’t let nothing get in my way. I was telling my kids because my son . . . Because I raised my three kids by myself. I’ve got three kids, two boys and a girl. I raised them by myself, and I used to pay babysitters and, if I wanted to go out, I would have to pay somebody to keep them while I go out, so my baby boy, he used to say to me, “Mom, when I get older,” he said, “I’m gonna buy you a house and a car.” He said, “Cause I’m tired of you paying people rent, and I’m tired of you paying taxes.” So, now I tell him . . . I say “what happened to my house and my car?”

Their friends used to call me the mean mommy because when they came home from school, they had to do their chores and their homework and if it wasn’t done by 4:30, they were not allowed to go outside. So, their friends said oh, you got a mean mommy. They said my mama would let me go outside and play first, and I come in the house and do my house . . . No, no, no, no. Then I come in the house and be sleepy. So, you are not . . . If you don’t do your chores and your homework, you’re not gonna go outside.

And it was right here in Whitman Houses.

My youngest son, [Jermaine] yeah, he’s in the Bronx because he’s a 9-1-1 operator. He has a co-op in the Bronx. My oldest son, Jamelle, he’s a maintenance for New York City Housing Authority but he lives in public housing. He lives here in Whitman Houses. My daughter, Amanda, she was married for 25 years.

She has five children and five grandkids now. I’m a great-grandmother. Yeah. I have nine grands and let’s see, seven great grands and two more . . . three more on the way, great grands. [Jamelle, Jessica, Niel, Katora, Tiffany, Kaomi, Tashay, Asia, Soraya, Jamelle]

REUNIONS

We have family reunions every year.

Every year we go a different place. I had a niece that passed away in November. So, for family reunion for 2018, we all . . . Her birthday was July 22nd, so instead of having our reunion, we went to her birthday. We gave her a surprise birthday party because the doctor had given her six months. So, we gave her a surprise birthday party, so all the family went to Georgia, Atlanta and 2018 . . . This year, we said we’d go on a cruise. We go to Disney World. We go different places.

It’s my brothers and sisters, their children and their children’s children. So, it’s like 40 or 50 of us, yes, yes. We get hotels and last year on my birthday, my son always takes me . . . We went on a cruise. I love to cruise. The first year I was scared to death. I tried everything to get out of it.

I can’t swim. To think of being on that big ole boat, but when I got on that boat, now I want to go on a . . . I went on three cruises in one year.

I’ve been to the Bahamas. I’ve been to Aruba. I’ve been to . . . We went to Mexico. We went to Puerto Rico. We be cruising and the good thing is, once you pay, the food is . . . You don’t pay for food unless you want to go to a restaurant or something like that because they have a buffet, all you can eat buffet, breakfast, dinner. The only thing you have to pay for is your drinks and I don’t drink, so I don’t have to worry about that and you only need money if you’re gonna buy souvenirs or something to bring back home, other than that, you don’t need money.

EDUCATIONS II

Well, in the South, you don’t have strict parents because you know what you gotta do and what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. I know you gotta respect your elders, that’s one thing. There’s no disrespect. Anybody could come to you, older person, and tell you listen, Isabella, you were doing something wrong and I’m gonna tell your mother. You know you gotta say yes ma’am and no ma’am. You can’t disrespect your elders. So, in my day, we were very respectful because you know you do not disrespect and there wasn’t a lot of . . . There were no gangs and fighting and stuff like that where I come from because everybody . . . In my hometown, it was such a small place. Everybody knew everybody. Like most families, if they didn’t know your daddy, they knew your mother or your aunt, they knew somebody in your family. So, you’re gonna be on your best behavior at all times no matter what.

So, that’s how I taught my kids. You have to be respectful. Like my son told me one day there was an older lady. He said, “Mommy, she was cursing me out, calling me all . . .” He said, “I remember what you said, respect your elder.” He said, “Mama, it took everything in the world.” I said, “Just walk away. Do not disrespect her, just walk away.” He said, “It was the hardest thing for me to do is walk away that day,” but he said he did. He remembered mama told me just walk away. So, and everybody tell me how respect- . . . And they were born and raised right here. People feel that if you were born and raised in a develop . . . Well, they call it project. I hate the name project. I tell people it’s a development. It’s not a project because they think that you’re ghetto, everybody, but we have doctors and nurses. We have police officers. We have judges. We have tax administrators. We have . . . That was born and raised in public housing.

PUBLIC HOUSING

So, when they’re wrong to look at us . . . look down on people that’s in public housing because we are somebody too. We’re not living here for free. It’s not like we’re living here for free and public housing, we have to pay 30% of our income for rent before taxes. Oh yeah, before taxes. So, you got people that’s living in public housing and if there are four people in the apartment and all four people work, each one of them have to pay 30% of their income. So you might be in a three bedroom apartment, you might be paying over $3000 a month because of your income from the four people. So, it’s not that we’re living here for nothing. I pay 30% of my social security check. They take 30% for my rent. I mean I don’t get any food stamps or anything like that. I have to live on my social security check. So, I have to make it work from month to month.

If you’re not rich, it’s hard to live in New York but that’s what the governor wanted, what the mayor (not our mayor now but the mayor before) he wanted if you wasn’t rich, he wanted you to move out of New York.

He [the old mayor] said that. He didn’t have no problems saying that. He even said that he would pay anybody. He would pay their airfare if they would take one of the homeless people and leave New York, and I said well, the only way I would do that if he would buy me a house somewhere out of New York, paid for in full, yeah, I’ll take a homeless person and take them with me and have them wash up and clean up but I’m not gonna just take because he’s gonna fly me out of here. Where am I flying to?

CHEMISTRIES

Some people are very friendly, and I remember. . .I was in Chemical Bank, I was working with this white guy and this guy was in love with me, and I couldn’t believe it because I’m saying, he’s a white man but there was no prejudice in him, but he told me his mother was. He was funny, and he used to say, “Let me come and see you. I’ll come as a milkman. I’ll come wherever you want me to come.” He said, “I’m just . . .” I said, “Listen, first of all, you don’t even know if I’m a man or woman.” He said, “Well, you can’t be a man ’cause you got children.” John was funny. He had this girlfriend, and she was like a secretary for this big company, and she went away on a trip, a business trip with her boss man and her and her boss man had an affair. So, she sent John a Dear John letter. So, he was so hurt.

It bothered me, but that was after I had left the bank, but we kept in touch. He would call me every once in a while and stuff like that. He told me what his girlfriend had done to him, so I don’t know, I felt bad for him, but he was a nice guy it’s just that I couldn’t . . . At that time, the way I had been treated in the South, even though I had no . . . I just say . . . I said . . . I told him, I said I don’t think my family would accept me dating a white guy. I remember one of my classmates, she came to New York and she got a white boyfriend, and she took him back down to the club. Oh my god, it was on in that club. They told her she better get out of there with him because they didn’t know how to deal with it. I mean it wasn’t happening in the South. He felt comfortable there because he was from New York but in the club where it was all black, and he was the only white guy in there, they told her to get him out of there. So, she had to leave then and just get on the road and come back to New York.

It’s like two different worlds, I guess. The South and the North. But now it’s kind of like closing in. It’s getting better. It’s getting better because when you were down south, I never knew . . . When I see . . . Girls used to act like boys, we used to call them tomboys, okay? And when a boy act like a girl, we used to call them a sissy. Because we didn’t know anything about lesbians or anything like that. I found that out long after I came to New York. But then: to each his own. Like if that’s what you want to be, God bless you and whatever but I just didn’t understand why girls were acting like boys and boys were acting like girls, but we never even tried to figure it out. Just said stop acting like a sissy. Go somewhere and sit down when a boy act like a girl.

But when you came to New York, you learned everything.

You learn everything but I thank God I raised my kids. They came out good kids and they were born and raised here in Whitman Houses.

And I’m proud of myself and a lot of people that live here that know me, they say you know what? I envy you because you raised them. You got some good kids and you raised them by yourself and there’s a lot of mamas and dads there, and their kids just went wild and I get a lot of compliments from some of my residents.

I did have one [heartbreak]. In the South.’Cause we promised each other that if we didn’t marry each other, we would never marry anybody but when I left the South, I begged him to come with me. I said, “I can’t take the South,” but his mother didn’t want him to . . . He was afraid to come to New York and I didn’t want to stay in the South but he went into the service. He went into the service and when he came out the service, we kept in touch. He would write me and stuff like that and I kept telling him, “Why don’t you come?” He kept telling me, “I’m scared and I’m not coming to New York. Please come back.” I said, “Well, I’m definitely not coming back to the South.” But we still promised each other if we didn’t marry each other, we wouldn’t marry anybody. So, one day, about three years after I was here, my sister called me one day. She said, “Listen, what are you doing?” And after that, she said, “Well, you probably need to sit down.” I said, “Why?” She told me that he had just married [another woman]. So, I said, “Okay, fine.”

FAITH AND GRATITUDE

Well, I’m a believer in the Lord and my church is the Church of the Open Door on Nassau Street. I mean I don’t go every Sunday. I don’t go as much as I should go but I do have faith and I pray every day. I thank God every day I wake up because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here, so I have to give him praise and thanks for waking up. So. . . And I think a lot of faith is what got me here.

Having faith in what I believe in and what I was to do. I feel good about myself because if I do nothing else, I did what I was set out to do, have me a bank account, write a check. So, I look back and I laugh and I tell my sisters . . . Because my sisters were here for . . . They came up for Christmas, they were up here, they came up and we had a great time . . . So, I feel good because when I came here, I mean I had good jobs. I always have faith and I will always send them at Christmas . . . Like they had in the South, it was mother’s day or father’s day and it was a children’s day. So, for children’s day, I would always send my sisters a check to buy their girls dresses so they can get dressed up and go to church for children’s day. And I would send my mother a check. I would always send them checks so they could go and buy what they needed. So I feel . . . ‘Cause I helped a lot of people, even here, people come to me like I can take money from a tree and pull it but I hate for somebody to come to me and tell me they’re hungry. I’d take my last dollar and go and get them something to eat ’cause I don’t want nobody to be hungry.

As a matter of fact, we got pantry this Saturday on Nassau Street at the Boys and Girls Club. I used to do pantry here until they put up these fences. Hopefully, by the summer, I can start by doing the pantry from here but we do it every third Saturday at the Boys and Girls Club on Nassau Street. As a matter of fact, this Saturday, I hope it’s not snowing like they say because we’ve got pantry this Saturday.

Everything is so expensive now, and people can’t afford they can’t afford because the price of everything is going up and they look forward to the pantry because even though here, when we were doing pantry here, we gave meats and everything. Juice and everything but at the pantry we do every . . . It’s only fruits and vegetables that we give at this one over here because they don’t have a spot to keep the fresh . . . Like the meats and stuff.

So, whatever we get, we have to give it out . . . Give everything out that day and if we have some leftover, I’ll bring it here and I give it out here but yeah, there’s a great need for pantries now. If you think about it, the government shutdown, even the people that work for the government, they going to pantries now ’cause they have to, especially when they were living from paycheck to paycheck and they’re not getting a paycheck. It’s a sad situation right now.

We got three homeless shelters right here in this . . . There’s one over there in Cumberland on Park Avenue and Prince Street. There’s a male shelter and a woman’s shelter. The male shelter is on Prince and the woman’s shelter is around the corner on Park Avenue, right down the block.

They’re always full. It’s sad and it’s because . . . Like the people here and the one across the street here at Cumberland, they’re working people but they can’t afford to rent and that’s really a sad situation when you’re working and you still can’t afford an apartment because the rent is so high. They keep putting up these buildings and right now . . . And most of the buildings they’re putting up, they’re still half empty because people cannot afford the rent.

DARRELL

I met Darell about . . . Maybe about 10 years ago now and I took him under my wing even though I’m only like six years older than he is, to me he’s like a son because he was an only child. If I feel that he don’t have anything to eat, I make sure he has food to eat. I make sure that even though the bad thing is when I give him money to get a cigarette, I shouldn’t ‘cause he should stop smoking but. . . For the past 10 years I’ve been looking out for Darrell. He’s a vet. He put me down like on his paperwork—if anything happens or anything—that they could contact [me]. I’m his contact person.

I [first] met with Darrell, actually he came here to get food from the pantry and we asked him if he wanted to work with the pantry. So, he started working with the pantry and then he . . . just stay here. He helps me in here. He mops up and cleans up and does stuff in here for me and I make sure that he gets stuff to eat. He has his cooking license, yeah.

REMEMBER

Don’t let [life] get you down.

Just put your mind to it and go for it and you will achieve if you believe.

You gotta believe.

I wouldn’t let nothing stop me. You gotta go for your dream.

Return

Darrell Robinson

Interview location: The tenant’s association office on Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn
When: Fall 2018

FINDING A PLACE TO COOK

I’ve been here for eight years working with Ms Bell. I came here by accident, actually. I was living in a veterans residence over in Long Island City, and some guys came through, Black Vets For Social Justice. “There’s an opportunity for some housing over here,” so I came to 105 Carlton Avenue, which is across the street. I realized that it was right up the block from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I served my last 18 months in the United States Army stationed there. I hadn’t thought about this place for like 40 years, and I ended up living up the block from it.


I came here, I was an alcohol and substance abuse counselor. The job fell through, so I was out of work. They had a pantry here. I came by the pantry one day, and all they had was potatoes and onions left, so I took a bag of potatoes and onions home and I made a potato and onion soup for the ladies. I brought it back. They asked me, could I cook? I was like, “Yeah, that’s what I’ve done most of my life.” They asked me to come join them. I’ve been working here ever since.


I cook for the events they have. When they have a tenants association meeting or the closed door meetings. Any other events they have. I help Ms. Bell, I’ll do some of the cooking.

I like Italian seafood. Lobsters and shrimp and calamari and things like that.

I dropped out of school at age 16. At the time they had John F Kennedy’s Neighborhood Youth Corps. I got a job working at Suffolk Developmental Center, a hospital out in Melville, Long Island. I started there as a pot washer, and I washed pots there for about six months. Then I got onto the cooking floor and I cooked there until I was 18. I joined up, joined the army. Did a year in Vietnam. Did 18 months here at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Then I went back to work at Suffolk Developmental Center for a couple years.

Then I moved to Brooklyn. I fell in love with a young lady who lived here in Brooklyn, so I moved to Brooklyn for a while. That fell apart.

It lasted for three years. We separated. I’ve been here ever since. I just did odd jobs. I cooked at different places. Years later I ended up here.

LONG ISLAND TO ARMY

I went to school [and] grew up in Wyandanch, Long Island. Wyandanch is in Suffolk County. It’s in the township of Babylon. It was, I grew up, I guess you [could say an] African American middle class home. My mother had a job. She worked at the same place I worked at for years. I was a naval cadet for a lot of years. I played drums with the naval cadets. I taught martial arts out there for a while.

They had a TaeKwonDo studio at a local church. I started there when I was nine years old. I started studying TaeKwonDo. I studied and practiced most of my teenage years and into my mid 20s. It brought a respect for life. Stability. Conflict resolution. Rather than to fight, to talk it out. It made me feel secure. It was interesting.

Some friends of mine, we were hanging out one night. We had all just turned 18, and the draft was on, so we signed up for the draft. While I was there I took the test, and I decided I wanted to leave my little small town. There was a war going on. My stepfather had been career Air Force, so I felt an obligation to join the military, and I did. I joined the army kind of to tick him off and to get out of my little small town.


My father was kind of distant. He was my stepfather, for one. He was very very military, very strict. Very stern kind of guy. We weren’t very close. As a matter of fact, I remember very little about him. Other than that he was a strict disciplinarian. He wanted me to be a young airman, so he treated me like one of his troops.

I went to Fort Gordon, Georgia. I trained as a telephone operator. I had a top secret crypto clearance. I did crypto communications between Vietnam and Thailand into Washington DC.

Crypto communications is like, if you make a phone call from where you are to where I am, if the enemy or someone tries to break into it, all they hear is noises. It scrambles the sound of your voice so you can’t understand what’s being said. I did that for a year while I was in Vietnam. Then when I came here to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I worked on a telephone system. I did international phone calls from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to other ports of call all over the world.

[The calls were about] shipments. Cars and equipment and stuff that was being shipped in. I lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, at the Military Ocean Terminal, which was a navy base, but the army was stationed there also. We went back and forth from Bayonne, New Jersey, to the back of the Brooklyn Navy Yard by PT boat. I had only seen this side of it twice. I came out and took the subway to Penn Station to go back, to go home. I didn’t even know what a project was until I was 19 years old. I had never seen a development.

Growing up on Long Island, there’s no NYCHA housing out there, so I didn’t know anything about this area. When I came back here 40 years later I was kind of surprised. I [now] live across the street, at 105 Carlton Avenue. I didn’t know anything. I really didn’t even know it existed until I moved back here.

But from what I hear, it’s changed a lot. From the rough old days. There was a lot of drug activity going on here, which has calmed down considerably. I understand now that NYCHA is having a lot of problems with heating and hot water and stuff. People come, you know, when they have an issue they bring it here to Ms. Bell. She takes it to management. Management usually gets the job done pretty quickly.

I went back [to Long Island] a couple times. The house I grew up in looks very small now. I guess it does after you grow up, and the town has changed a lot. But you know, I would rather be here in Brooklyn.

My mother’s passed away. I have no brothers and sisters. I’m an only child.

COMMUNITY CHEF

It’s been a good opportunity. I met Ms. Bell. I started working here, started volunteering here. Through her I’ve gotten involved with Myrtle Avenue Revitalization. Through them I was a community chef. I also helped run a vegetable stand that came here every Thursday. I was one of the co-managers of the vegetable stand. As a community chef, whatever vegetables came in, I would set up a table and bring out my cooking stuff. I’d prepare the vegetables right there on site, so people could see new recipes and new ways to prepare different vegetables that came in.

I also got a certificate in nutrition from Cornell while working here. It’s been a good opportunity working here. I’ve learned a lot of things. I’ve gotten involved in Laurie Cumbo’s campaign. I did posters [for Laurie Cumbo’s campaign]. I did flyering through the community. Put up posters. Went to rallies. That sort of thing. I’ve met the senators and the governor and a lot of other people. Influential people. It’s been a fun run.

You have to [get involved in politics]. In order to get things done you have to speak to the people in power that have the know it all to get things done in the neighborhood. It’s been an opportunity, to speak to those people and to voice concerns about things that are good and bad in the neighborhood.

[As a Community Chef] I created the recipes. I just drew on experience I had cooking at different restaurants and places. I had a small burner I would set up. The night before I knew what was coming in, so I would write up a recipe and I’d prepare it.

It was simple. It was just sauteed vegetables. I make the vegetables as a main course. I’d hand out samples. From those experiences I got involved with the Brooklyn Food Coalition. I was on their board of governors for a while. We did food sourcing for the schools to make sure that schools had healthy food. I also worked for the Board of Ed for a while doing that. They had a program called From the Garden To the Café, where the kids would plant gardens over the summer. Then in the fall they would pick the vegetables and I would come in, and I would also write a recipe for the vegetables. I would prepare vegetables and talk to the kids about nutrition and healthy eating. All over, from the Queens border to the Bronx. Everyday I was in a different school doing food demonstrations. That was also a fun event.

Things like, they planted bok choy, which is a Chinese vegetable. I taught them how to slice it and how to saute it using salt and pepper, and a little oil, and steam it down. It was a fun thing. Arugula salads and different things of that nature.

I didn’t work with that garden, with the children there. I helped create the gardens that we have here. At Walt Whitman we have The Love Garden. I did the paperwork to get the funding for that garden, which is closed now because the contractors have the area locked off. Because the contractors have everything fenced off, because of fear of things falling off. They’re working on the roofs. I guess the state requires certain safety measurements, and that was one of the safety things they had to do was close off the area. But I worked in that garden for a couple years. We planted vegetables for the community, which is another fun event.

MENTORS

One of the first people I think of is Mr. John Day. He was my cooking instructor when I first started working in kitchens for the state. He was a good guy. He taught me how to manage a kitchen. Taught me how to slice and dice and how to use kitchen equipment. My weights and measurements and stuff. We cooked for 1500 people for three meals a day. He taught me how to manage that. How to manage a kitchen.

He said if I wasn’t going to go to school, I was going to go to school in the kitchen. So I started classes there. Learning weights and measurements and how to store. First in, first out. How to manage a store room. Store room was twice the size of this area here, so I had to learn what things were, and how to measure them out. How to store them. Doing prep for the next day. It was a good thing.

I remember when I first started trying to make tapioca pudding and I burned the pot. Like 80 gallons of tapioca I had to throw out. They weren’t very happy with me that day.

Very glad he was in my life at the time.

CW Bee was a chief warrant officer I served under when I was in Vietnam, who taught me how to be a better soldier. He inspired me. He wanted me to stay in the military. But by the time I got back from Vietnam I was tired of the military. I was ready to move on. But he was a good person. He taught me a lot about the military.

There’s the stable life, you know? It’s comradery. You meet guys as you live with and work with, and you learn how to be a team player. How to be mission oriented. To get things done in an orderly fashion. Keep good records. Keep things in order.

WRONG WAR

[I did encryption and messaging because] I took the test. When you go in they test you on different skills and different levels. I took the test and I passed it.

I didn’t tell them I could cook. When you go in the military they ask you jobs that you had, and I didn’t, I put down that I could cook but I didn’t specify that I wanted to cook in the military. My vision of a military cook was always the potbelly guys you saw with the cigar in his mouth, screaming at everybody in a large kitchen. I didn’t want to be under that kind of pressure in the military. I decided, they decided that I would be a good communicator.

I spoke well and I kept good records, so they gave me that job.

I got there [to Vietnam] and I saw what was going on. I felt like we really had no business there. There was no war to win. The government, that we couldn’t win that war. It was futile. We were just killing people, and then guys were coming back with physical and mental illnesses. Coming back with Agent Orange, and the government denied it—the companies that supplied Agent Orange and denied that it was a cancer causing agent. We had to fight them for 20 years to get guys what they deserved.

But I knew coming out of the military that it was a wrong war. That we shouldn’t have been there. The average age of a guy there was like 23 years old. They were young guys just serving their country, so they thought. We were actually serving big business. It was about business. I was disillusioned.

I got there in 1969. By that time we had figured out that this was not a good, this was a bad thing to be doing.

STILL FIGHTING

Whenever I have a medical issue I go to the VA hospital in Brooklyn here. Fort Hamilton. It’s a good hospital. I feel privileged to have served in the military and have that hospital there.

I suffer with PTSD. I’m fighting now to get my benefits. They had given me benefits at 100 percent, then last year they wrote me a letter saying they were going to cut me off, that I was wrongly diagnosed. So they cut my benefits from almost $3000 down to $136. I’m fighting that now.

I got a letter one day saying that I received the wrong diagnosis, and that they were going to cut my benefits.


I saw a doctor and was diagnosed. Then they decided it. Then I received a letter yesterday that they were going to stand by their decision. I got this letter Friday from the Department of Veterans Affairs that they were going to stand by their decision, and that I wouldn’t be receiving the benefits anymore. I’m going to appeal.

The DAV, Disabled [American] Veterans organization, is going to help me with my appeal process. A lot of vets, thousands of us were cut off. I think our new president had something to do with that. Everybody has to go through their own appeals process. It’s not like a class action suit. It’s individual. Individuals have to do your own appeal process.

THE SMALLER LOSSES

Cable TV had to go. Food and laundry, my laundry gets backed up. It’s been difficult, but I manage. I watch a lot of nature channels. A lot of channel 13. I watch, well now I use the antenna. I have it in the window, so I get pretty good reception. I watch a lot of Law and Order, crime cop shows and stuff like that. A lot of channel 13, nature shows. Political stuff.

FIRST INSPIRATION IN COOKING

I lived with my grandmother, and my grandmother was magic in the kitchen. I remember the first time she made meringue. I came home from school one day and she was in the kitchen, she was making lemon meringue pie. I saw how she separated the egg whites from the yolks, and she had it in a bowl. She was asking me about my day, and this rhythmic sound that she was making as she was whipping these eggs with two forks. She said, “You know how you can tell when this is ready?” I was like, “No, ma’am.” She said, “When you can turn the bowl upside down and it doesn’t fall out of the bowl.”


I thought it was magic, seeing these egg whites go into this fluffy stuff that she was making. That kind of inspired me to learn how to cook.

She would let me cut up the vegetables. She taught me how to saute. I remember spending the weekend at my grandmother’s, and she made me my first sunny side up eggs. I got back home to my mother, and she was making eggs for me. Her idea of a fried egg was a cracked egg, put it in a pan, mash it, turn it over, fry it, and that was it. I was like, “No. I want the way grandmother cooked them.” She said, “Well you have to cook it yourself then.” I was like five years old. She pushed a chair up to the stove, and I cooked my first eggs..

ARKANSAS, ALASKA, AND BEYOND

[My grandmother lived in] Little Rock, Arkansas. That’s where I was born. But I traveled with my father, my step father. We lived in Washington DC. We lived in Anchorage, Alaska for a while. I think I was eight years old when we lived in Anchorage, at the air force base there. It was interesting. It was the first time I saw snow.

When we arrived there that night, it snowed like eight feet, with 12 foot drifts. They have excellent snow removal in Alaska. They’re used to it, you know? It was interesting, going to school there.

I [also] remember going out and playing in the snow. Building snow forts and tunnels in the snow.

I remember I woke up one morning. We were living in Anchorage. My mother calls me into the kitchen, and there were moose in our backyard. I had never seen moose before. I had never seen large animals before. It was exciting. I wanted to go out there. She was like, “No. You can’t go out there.”


From Little Rock we moved to Texas. To Big Springs, Texas. Wichita Falls, Texas. Washington DC. Anchorage, Alaska. Then to Wyandanch, Long Island. On the base they have their own elementary, high schools.

They were all military kids. I was what’s called an Air Force brat. My step father was a high ranking non-commissioned officer. He did supplies for SAC command. Strategic Air Command on the base there. It was exciting.

I would go back [to Little Rock]. Some summers I would go back and I would stay with my grandparents.

I was always building things. I was a creative kid, you know? I had an erector set, which was a set of toy metal railings that you’d put together to create different things.

I built model cars for a lot of years. I’d buy these model car sets and I would build model cars and paint them up and decal them up.

A lot of stuff got left behind. You move on to a new place, you pick up new things to do.

My mother and father divorced, so we moved. I moved back to Arkansas with my grandparents for one school session, and then the next year I moved to Wyandanch, Long Island.

NORTH SOUTH

It was difficult [moving to Long Island]. Because living in Little Rock—I lived downtown Little Rock—was like living in Greenwich Village. Jim Crow was still very alive and well, and we lived supposedly separate but equal. Downtown Little Rock was an all Black neighborhood. I remember living across the street from the YWCA. It was centrally located. Everything was within a block or two of where we lived. Then when I moved to Long Island, we lived basically in the woods. The house we had, it was like, let’s say this is a city block. Our house was the first house on the block, but it was a house plot in. Then later my parents bought the whole back side of the block.

It was like living in the woods. There was only three houses on the block at the time. I went to my grandmother’s one summer, and I came back, and they had built six more houses. They had cut down the woods and built more houses, and more kids moved in.

Living in Arkansas, there was very little interaction with white people. We had our own everything. I lived across the street from Mount Zion Baptist Church, which was one of the largest churches in Little Rock at the time. A Black funeral parlor was across the street from them. The Gem Theater was down the block. I really didn’t encounter racism until I moved to New York.


Wyandanch was another little town that was predominantly Black. There were a few Hispanics, a few whites, but next door to it was Deer Park. Deer Park was like a white enclave. Whenever you crossed the border into that area it was always an issue. There was always trouble.

“You don’t belong here.” Giving you dirty looks. You go shopping and they follow you around in the stores, that sort of thing. Typical racist based hate stuff went on.

Racism was new to me. Having lived on Air Force bases, it was a mixed group of people. I moved back to Arkansas, it was a separate but equal type thing. I really didn’t pay much attention to it. I was a kid. I was enjoying life, having fun. My grandparents were worried because I was a real free-hearted kind of kid. My cousin Archie, he lived on the other side of town, so I had to go from where we lived through a white neighborhood to get to his house. My grandmother was always concerned whenever I went to visit my cousins.

We had to ride the back of the bus, that sort of thing. To be polite to white people. Say, “Yes ma’am,” and “Yes sir.”

[In New York] it’s very subtle, but nonetheless it exists. A level of distrust. I guess they view this as distrust, with a level of distrust. When you go into the stores, people will follow you around.

We’re just people. People are people.

I’ve learned to deal with people on an individual level. It’s how you treat me, how you respect me. You get that same respect back. I haven’t had any issues with racism here in this area.

THE NEXT GENERATIONS

I would like to get more younger people involved in the community. To come out to the tenants association and know what’s going on in their community. There’s not enough youth organizations for the area.

Like the young adults who are busy raising children. They don’t take the time to come out and find out what’s going on in the community. How they can help create situations that are best for themselves.

I have three children. They live out in Wyandanch, Long Island, and in Deer Park. [I’m] not really [in touch with them]. Yeah, I would like to be.

I was an absentee father for a while. I suffered from PTSD, so I really wasn’t communicating with anybody for a long time. Relationships kind of fall apart.

It’s like, what do you say to children after you’ve been gone for so long?

I would have done things differently. Like I said, I suffered from PTSD for a while. I kind of isolated myself away from everybody. Growing up as an only child, moving around. You kind of, you don’t develop that real sense of family and close relationships with people, knowing that you’re only going to be here for a while and you’re going to be gone.

That kind of led into my adult life.

[And with the PTSD], there was 20, 30 years that I dealt with it that I really didn’t know what was going on with me. I just was having issues with alcohol and drugs. Then I went away to a rehab with the military for six months up in upstate New York. I got a grip on what was going on with my life. I’ve been better off since.


[At rehab] we talked about the symptoms of what was going on with me, you know? I was still fearing for my life, and having a thing called . . . hypervigilance.

Being concerned about something bad about to happen to you. Being uncomfortable all the time. Depression and anxiety. That sort of thing. They taught me how to deal with it.

THE SHORTEST FIGHT

I went to Cellars once to see a Mike Tyson fight. Over on Dekalb Avenue. It was a very popular spot. I went over there and we had dinner, and I saw a fight there. It was quick. It was very quick. I looked down at my plate. When I looked up, the fight was over.

FAITH

I used to go to the Church of the Open Door with Ms. Bell on occasion. I used to attend Brooklyn Tabernacle in downtown Brooklyn, down nearby Macy’s. I read my Bible on occasion.

It was part of my childhood. My grandparents were on the usher board and on the senior choir at Mount Sinai Baptist Church, so I went. [It] was diagonally across the street from us, so I went there a lot. You know, we lived in church.

Mondays, Wednesdays, choir rehearsals and stuff. Yeah, I grew up with a good belief. A good strong religious background. We grew up Baptist.

You know, prayer and worship has had a strong influence in my life.

ADVICE

Start thinking about your future when you’re very young. Find a job that you think that you really enjoy. If you love your work, it’s not really work. Find a talent. I think everybody was given a god-given talent. To be able to find that talent and nurture it will help you along. Learn money management. They don’t teach money management in school. You know, how to manage your money and how to create good credit. They don’t teach these things. You don’t learn these things coming out of school. Later on in life you learn how to manage your money. How to develop good credit. That the world is based on credit ratings. I’m still struggling with it. I’m still struggling with money management.

HANGING OUT WITH COUSIN ARCHIE

Once we traveled across town through the storm drains. Arkansas is a storm center. Lightning, heavy storms. We had a paper route as a kid. He had a paper route on his side of town. I had a paper route on my side of town. At one point the paper routes converged, so we would meet every Sunday morning and pick up our papers, and then we would do our route. At the end of it, for whatever reason we climbed into the storm drains, and we traveled across town through the storm drains.

I remember going into it being mischievous. [Once], we climbed in, I guess it would be like the local lighting company truck yard. We drove the trucks around in the yard. [I was] nine.

We didn’t get caught. We did that. Where we lived in Arkansas we lived on a property I guess it would have been like living on a Catholic church property. There was a church and there was a parish house. But we lived in a house on the property, and my grandparents maintained the property. We cut the grass and did that sort of thing.

TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN

One summer I went to summer camp with a bunch of white kids. We went up to Petit Jean Mountain. I remember being up on the top of the mountain looking down. It was really exciting. It got me involved, got me excited about scouting and wanting to be in the military and that sort of thing.

Return

Francis Scott

Interview location: 228 York Street. Community center. It’s the 228 Senior Citizens’ Center. [Housing on York Street]
When: Winter 2019

EARLY YEARS


[I was born in] ’38, so I’m 80 years old. My mother and father, they was married. My mother and father, they separate, and my mother was living in a place called Savannah, Georgia, and my father vanished. He went someplace else. So my grandparents raised me, Eloise Smalls and Luther Smalls.

We were the first black people to have a bathroom, kitchen, everything, and the first black [people] to have a TV at our home, a television. My grandfather moved to a place called Fernandina, Florida, and he was the first black person to be on the train, work on the railroad. He had come into a little money, and this man throwed the switch on the track and killed my grandfather.

He got killed in 1948. That just turned me off, because he was a person, he gambled and he. . . $1000 he had won, but this man [who threw the switch] was supposed to be his friend. He was not his friend, was like his enemy.

We had a huge house. Underneath the house, if you were 5’9, you could stand up underneath our house. You could just walk underneath like a person. We had five bedrooms, [a] dining room, and kitchen. My grandmother, she cooked three or four meals a day. Lots of people in our hometown, they didn’t allow their kids to eat with the grown people, but my family wasn’t like that. Our kids, we sit to the table, and we eat what we want. If I didn’t want chicken, I could eat anything I want. I had a good life. A lot of my cousins didn’t have [that], so my grandmother raised about 26 of them.

She raised them. My mother didn’t have but one kid, me.

And I [traveled] on the train from South Carolina to Florida. I never had to pay, because my grandfather was a train man. I had a good life.

[They] said there was prejudice. At my home we could play with the white kids. We wasn’t like that. I didn’t know. We could play with the white kids [Richard and Jimmy, I remember]. They would come over, and we had fun. So a lot of my friends, they don’t like whites. You know how some people is.

YOU LIE, YOU STEAL

But I had a beautiful life. My mother give me just what I want, but I had to listen. I think I got one spanking. She sent me to the store [to Miss Amy] to get something, and I told a lie. [I was suppose to get] Johnnycake or something. And [Miss Amy] says, “Take this to Eloise,” my grandmother. So on my way [back] I got to start eating a piece, eating it. Got home, it wasn’t but two or three [left]. I said, “She didn’t give it to me.” And [my grandmother] said, “Go back to Miss Amy. Take that back.” And I said, “I can’t.” She said, “If you lie, you’ll steal.” I’ll never forget that. She said, “Never touch it. It’s not yours. You don’t touch it. You ask for [a] thing.”

KARMA


Everybody in this neighborhood knows me, especially in the building. I can walk down the street right now and pretend I’m sick. They will come to my rescue, because everybody, “Miss Scott, how you feeling today?” It’s the way they treat people. If I don’t feel good, I’ll tell the person. You all got to be careful how you treat people, because karma gonna come back at you.

What goes around comes around.

SLINGSHOT


My mother was a beautiful woman, but I had a crazy father. He was so jealous ’til it wasn’t funny. Because my mother, with long nails. . . She had to fix herself up. She was so pretty. But my father, he didn’t like that. He was so jealous, and to me, when I got older, I saw how he was acting. So I feel my mother. We have to do something. I said, I call my mother Naomi, I said, “Naomi, daddy is no good.”

We made, my cousin [and I], we made something like a slingshot, like a pistol. We made it. We put rocks in it and strings.

[My father tried to burn my mother with hot water, but he got me], so I shoot him in his butt, and then he was hollering, and then we ran to my grandmother house.

[I was] 10. I remember everything. He would wanna go and do, because my mother was pretty. I had to do something. He told me, “When you see me again, you’ll have children, and your children will have children,” and he’s not lying. I told him, I said, “If I ever see you again I will kill you.” The anger I had for him, you know what I mean? And that’s why I always tell everybody, if you get abused in your relationship, please try to get out and walk. Because I says, me, I’m not gonna tolerate nobody abuse. But he was just a crazy man, and I just couldn’t see how he was.

After [the sling-shot], I guess he went home and see how he was bruised up back there.

We put rocks in [the slingshot] and all kinds of things. We tried to hurt him, and we ran up. [After], we was running for our life. We ran to my grandmother house, and my grandmother and grandfather don’t play. I’ll never forget. I can see it right now. The deputy sheriff came. They couldn’t catch my father. He just vanished in the air. They said he went to Florida, and things like that, but I haven’t seen him since then. I’m 80 years old. Some of the family I talk to . . . but I was always close to my mother family. I had two sides, the Gillasons and the Smalls. My grandmother, my mother, and cousin.

ONE BIG URN

I have some cousins. We’re very close, but after my mother died 2002, we just don’t see eye to eye. Because they feel when my mother died I shoulda took her body to South Carolina. My mother told me before she died, she wanted to be cremated, I did just that. My daughter died, the same thing. My daughter had bone cancer, and she died, so I put everything together, big urn. I’ve got it in my living room. I didn’t . . . All of my family, so we stopped speaking. I just tell ‘em . . . I’m the boss. Y’all have to listen to me: She didn’t want that. I said, “It wasn’t for my mother you all didn’t have a place to stay.”

GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF IT

[When I was 10] we stayed in a place called Fernandina, Florida and Yulee, Florida. That was right by the water where all the shrimps and stuff at. But then I was just such a smart, big head girl, very nosy-like, and my grandfather was handsome, green eyes, big man. This lady I knew, Miss Dora, she said, “Mr. Smalls bring so and so.” So I find out she was liking my grandfather. So I took the nails outta a step [of the staircase]. It was a board step, and I screw all of those things out. She broke her ankle, she fell. I was bad.

I told my mother that she was going with my [grandfather] . . . I said, “Naomi, Papa and Miss Dora boyfriend and girlfriend.” She said, “Oh.” I said, “I set a trap for her.” It was because I loved my grandmother. I loved my grandfather too, and I think about that right now. I said, “Oh God, I was so bad.” And Miss Dora said to me, “You’re a bad little girl.” I said, “Don’t touch my grandfather.” Oh, I was mad. He said, “Come here babe.” I said, “Nope, I don’t love you anymore.” And then he tried to sweep me up, but I said, “Try that again. You’ll see what happen.”

Every time my grandmother would leave the table, she [Dora] would say a little smart thing to my grandfather. Something got into me, and she was making coffee, and I just hit the coffee. [Coffee went on her.] So then my grandmother came back in, I wait for [Miss Dora] to tell what I did but she didn’t say anything.

Then when my mother came down, and she said, “What’s going on?” I said, “I slapped the coffee on her.” “Why?” “Because she was touching Papa.” She says, “Okay.” She look at me, Miss Dora. My mother gave her that eye, and [Dora] got up with this little skirt on, short, you know. And I said, “Naomi.” She says, “What babe?” I said, “I’m gonna do something bad to her. If we don’t move, I’m gonna hurt her, I’m gonna do something bad.”

So then she went and told her father, my Papa. Papa said, “Oh that’s so cute.” She said, “Okay.” She came in her room, I threw everything on the floor, everything. So then we moved.

But my grandmother said, when she found out [about Miss Dora], she said, “I knew that.” She said, “No baby. Let God take care of that.” I used to get very angry with her. She said, “Let God take care of that, okay?” And I had to think what she was talking about. She said, “God will take care of all of that.” And she said, “God took care of it.”

So then, before we left I went to Miss Dora, we talked. And I said, “Miss Dora, I’m sorry I hurt you.” She said, “No. I’m sorry” [for] what she did. Because she said my mother was really a friend. And I asked a lot of questions, how long she was going with my grandfather. A little girl. I didn’t have no right.

DON’T

My mother told me, “Any man, anybody touch you, let me know. Don’t be scared.” And I raised my kids the same way. A lot of kids get molested, they don’t tell what’s going on. That’s why I raised my kids—I got grand, I got great-grand—I’ve got one 15-and-a-half, and I’ve got one 13. And they’re girls. I said, “Any man, anybody touch you, you let me know right away. I don’t care if I get crazy, go to the school, let me know.” Because my grandchildren, great grand, we always talk every morning. I make sure I talk to them. I says, “Anybody say anything out the way?” “No grandma.” “Because you know I will make it to school in a heartbeat.” She said, “No, no, no.”

Because a lot of the parents, they don’t have time. Take a little time. I take time, because I love children, and I work with kids every day.

THE ROELKERS

I’ll never forget this white lady [Ms. Roelker I worked for]. She learned me so much.

When they moved, she give me $5000 in the bank.

They had some money somewhere, and I was cleaning. And I saw this black sack. And I called Mr. And Mrs. Roelker, they was in Brussels. I said, “Mr. Roelker, I found some money.” He said, “No you didn’t.” I said, “Yes I did.” And you know, same money I found, that’s the money they gave me, $5000.

[Before they moved,] Ms Roelker, she wrote a letter, and she said, “Anybody that hire Francis, she’s honest.”

There was some big people [in their building]. 425 East 58th Street is a big place called Sutton Place big . . . Kevin Kline used to live in that building. And I says, I had my own room, my own key. I asked for something, she said, “Fran, you don’t have to ask.” No, I never. Because when you work for people [and you don’t ask], you will go to jail. And I’m scared of jail. I don’t want to go to jail. So that’s why I raised my kids, don’t steal. Ask for it. Because I said, “If you lie, you will steal.” I tell my kids all the time. “Do not lie to me, because you will steal.” that [is] raised into me [by] my grandmother, [and] she’s dead for many, many moons.

GIVE, GIVE, GIVE

[We used to farm.] We had got, we had pecans, we had tomatoes . . .[In] South Carolina. We grew up in a place called Garnett, South Carolina. That was right from Savannah, Georgia. We had horses, we had ponies, we had donkeys. We had the thing that butts you, what you call that? They would eat the clothes. He would butt us. A billy goat.

And then we would grow for the government, chicken. First there’d be little bitty babies, the little chickens. We would grow them. And we would get a certain amount of money for that. Sometimes we’d give [the eggs] away. My grandmother had so much, a lot of people needed, so we would give that to so and so, until I get angry with them. Then we had a dog. They couldn’t come over unless they would call my grandmother. “Eloise, we’re coming over.” And then, because I was so bad I said, “I’m not going to let them come over.” I would say, “Mommy, she always want you to give, give, give.” She said, “Close your mouth. Close your mouth.” So they would come over, she’d give them milk. We had a cow. We had cows. We had a lot of things.

[One neighbor], she would come over, get the milk, everything. And I used to get so angry. “You had a husband, family, why didn’t y’all have food?” And then my grandmother said, “No baby, the husband was so mean to them, you know?” And she would always, everybody in that town, she would give them.

SMART DOG

We had a smart dog. His name was Butch. Butch, we’d put the bag [around him] and say, “Go to the post office.” He would go, come back and give my grandmother the mail. He was so smart. And when the people come on our land, they’d ask us, park their car. We would open the car door and put the dog in there. Butch he’d lay down, he’d lay down until they open the door, and he would jump. And most of the people would be hollering, “Ms. Eloise, come, come!” And she said [to me], “Come here. What you do?” I said, “He didn’t ask me, Mommy. This is our land.” And she said, “That’s family.” “I don’t care.” That’s the type I was.

I said, “Come here Butch.” He would come. Oh, I loved that dog.

HOUSE RULES

We had a lot of family. Big family. And my grandmother had a living room, dining room, kitchen, three more bedrooms. You have to make it up nice, and have the yard so nice and clean. And I was raised like that. We had to get up and make sure breakfast is ready. You’ve got to take a bath, wash your hands. And that’s what my kids [do] when they come in the house, my grandson, oh God, they be like this.

One, two, three. In the bathroom. One, two, three. Don’t play. Yeah. “I went in the bath.” “No you didn’t. The water didn’t run.” I times everything. I wake up at 6:30. The oldest one I don’t have to wake up. She goes to school herself. But the baby one, I told her, I said, “When you get my age. . .” She said, “Yeah.”

NOBODY BOSS ME

She asked me, she said, “Are you ever gonna marry again?” I said, “No why you ask me that?” Why would I? Because I’m set in my ways. And it’s hard to find a man, like my husband, it’s hard to find another person like that you know.

I did have a good friend but I had to get rid of him. I don’t allow nobody come and boss me. He was telling me that, “You don’t like to listen.” And I said, “Damn. I think you better go.” He was a nice man, took me all over. Atlantic City, get the rooms, everything was nice. He never was married, never had children. But he figured that he could tell me what to do. And I told him “No.”

But in every year, my birthday, you know he always send me $80 or $90 for my birthday. He always put it in a . . . And he said, “You are a beautiful person. I will never forget you Francis.” I said, “Yeah, thank you, but no thank you, I don’t want to see you.” He wasn’t stingy or nothing. But he just, I couldn’t take a person like that. Because me and my husband, we had an understanding: First person get home [from work] cook. But I try not to be the first person. I would stop in the bar and have me a drink, and I’d look at the clock. I says, “No.” I get on the train, the subway. And he will say, “Francis, what took you so long?” I said, “Make a stop.” And then I come home and rest. But I had a real good life. I partied, I danced, I went all about. We went to a lot of places.

MOVING TO NY

I came to New York in 1957, with a friend of mine. We was married, my husband was up here already. Her name is Carrie. She’s still living, she’s older than I am. We stayed at St. Nicholas Avenue, call it Sugar Hill. We stayed there, we had a room there, we pay about $8. And then I got. . . less than a week, two weeks, I got a job at the nursing home at 205th Street.

I stayed there, and [at the nursing home] they came in love with me. But my husband, [didn’t want me] keeping a job. He said, “All the other wives are home.” They was training me to send me to Bellevue. But he caused me not doing it, and I regret that, because I like to help people, take care of people.

Then we stayed at St. Nicholas Avenue for a year or two years, and then we moved to 122nd Street, that’s in Harlem, between Seventh and Eighth. We stayed there for two years, then we moved to 114th Street. We stayed there for a couple of years, and then I didn’t like it, so I signed up for the city project. Mayor Wagner was the mayor. I wrote a letter. That’s how I got in. So I interviewed and come here [to York Street]. We was paying $58 a month rent. It was an excellent deal for the time.

We moved here in ‘61. April the 16th. [That’s also our wedding day. April 16, 1955.] I love that apartment. And I’ve been here ever since. My husband passed, and my daughter, since we got here. I always loved Harlem, but Harlem at the time wasn’t a place to raise a kid. So after I moved here I came to love this place, because I could walk across the Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge, and things like that.

THE BUILDING

Oh, we was like a family [in the building]. This is the best building, I’ll tell you now. Building Six. We would sit outside until, like, six o’clock in the morning. We would cook outside. You never heard about nothing happening in this building, because the men’s was alive and they would take care of the building. But now . . . We don’t have the people like we used to. On my floor it’s good, I’m on the fourth floor, because I don’t tolerate . . . There was a fellow on my floor walking around and I asked him, where was he going? He said, “Why?” I said, “Why? Because I pay rent here, you understand?” He said, “I’m looking for somebody.” That’s a lie. “Now,” I said, “Now when I go back in my house and I open the door again, you better be downstairs.” Well he thought I was lying, so I just got my machete out of the closet. And when he saw my machete, he took off. You have to protect. We have some nice people on our floor because we look out for each other. But this building is the best building. People is concerned, will hold the door for you.

Nobody been here longer than me. Some been here 20 years, and a little longer. . . One couple on my floor been here long. He’s Spanish, they’ve been here a long time. And the rest have been here less, much lesser than I. But we used to have a lot going, they done made a change. Used to have a store right downstairs. They would bring things there, and we’re gonna get milk, eggs and stuff.

But now they done change everything. I think the city and housing, maybe they didn’t want that or something like that. They just change everything. We used to go downstairs on Saturday morning and get eggs and things. Now I heard they gonna have round the clock men’s working. And I guess the building will be cleaned. This building used to be so sparkling. So clean. But we just got some people . . . don’t care.

SPEAK UP

I had to go to court for leaks and stuff, I talked to the judge, and he gave me a paper. And everybody [at management] said, “Oh they got a lady coming with the cane.” That’s right. I said, “See what the judge said?” They came and gave me new cabinet. I don’t care for it, it’s so small, all of my dishes and stuff, I can’t fit. And everybody in here is having trouble, because the leak and everything, some of the people built the apartments terrible.

A lot of people . . . I don’t know. I told them, “You’re gonna have to speak up. Have a voice.” “Oh I have to do this?” You’ve got to go to the right source, you know they’re going to lie. I know them like a book. You’ve got to stay on them. and he [the repair man] tell me . . . he says, “Ms. Scott, go home and wait for me.” I said, “Hell no, I’m not. I’m going to wait for you right here.” He said what the judge said, “okay.” I went back to the judge he said, “Everything alright, Ms. Scott?” I said, “So far everything is alright.” And I was telling the [other] ladies, what they have to do. You’ve got to stay on them, if you don’t stay on them, you get nothing done.

But it’s a lot of work. But if you see how some of the apartment is, it’s sad. My cabinet was going to fall down, my husband fixed it up so nice. And he [the repair man] asked me, “Who put this up I said, “My husband did.” They had a time taking the cabinet down, because he drilled it in the wall. But he did a good job. And I just told them, I’ve got to buy another cabinet because they didn’t put the whole cabinet. They just give you half of a cabinet. But they did a good job. I was [told by] the judge to have them cover my floor, because I carried on so bad.

Everybody knows me down there. They know me. That’s the lady is coming. I said, “Yeah, I’m coming to see you. Don’t lie.”

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The neighborhood, of course it’s beautiful. The library is so nice over there. Everything is so nice and clean. Back there all the high rises and different thing. They have stores back there. The carousel back there . . .

Years ago we used to stay in the navy yard because we used to go to parties in the navy yard. My girlfriend’s husband was in service, we didn’t have to pay. We would dance. They would have dancing and parties, and we would go dance. We would buy food, because my girlfriend husband, he had a pass. And we would go back there, it was so nice. Now, it changed. You can go back there but it’s still, you have to pay for certain things. And last time they gave us food, very good food back then. So I don’t know what gonna happen now.

PS8

I volunteer at PS8. That’s Brooklyn Heights. I help with breakfast in the morning at eight o’clock. I serve breakfast for the little kids, there’ll be about 40 kids. So I give them breakfast in the morning. And we have to count the kids, put it on the computer. And eight o’clock, and 20 after eight, breakfast is over. So they have to go upstairs. We have kids that come on the bus. If the bus kids come, we make sure we have breakfast for them. I put it on the side.

In the morning, this morning we had eggs, Canadian bacon, and we had muffins. English muffin. The whole wheat English muffin. They had apples, they had apple juice, then they have regular apples, they have cereal. And I have to put that on they plates. If they don’t eat it, we have to throw it in the garbage.

Sometimes they don’t want it. And then I’ll coax them, I’ll say, “Please eat.” And they’ll eat like that. They [the school] want me to work at 12 o’clock. I don’t want to go back for lunchtime. That’s not me. It’s enough for that little while, just to get out.

When I was working, they give me an award at Eric Adams’ office. I went there, got my award. A plaque. And we took pictures there, they had a big dinner for another lady and I. And Mr. Phillip, he was the principal at the time. And Mr. Adams, he took pictures with us.

A couple of the mothers, more than a couple years ago, they used to come early and ask me, “Miss S, what time you get in here?” I said, “Why?” She said, “I have to be at work at 8:00.” And I said, “Well I’ll be here at 10 after 7:00.” So I go meet them, and the principal said, “How could you do this early in the morning?” He said, “You really got a heart.” I love that school. I love the people there.

HOW TO SEE THE DOCTOR

I’ve been in the hospital a couple times for . . . I had a cyst, but it wasn’t cancer. I always, from the back of my insurance card, say I’m sick I want to go to Brooklyn. I would call. And when I get there, a doctor be waiting. And I was telling a lot of people, they should do [that]. But I said, I never go to the clinic and nothing wait no two hours, never. I always make sure, when I call them, “What’s your problem?” I said, “I can’t walk. My knee did swell up on me.”

They took me right in. It’s the way to do things. You got to read. I said [to my friends], if you don’t understand, come down [to the senior center] so we can talk about it.

For an old lady, I think I’m doing good.

9/11

I saw what happened. Oh, I was looking at it. I panicked, from my window. I ran outside, was screaming. I was outside walking, looking for my granddaughter. I was screaming. I said, “Oh God, look at what happened.” I would walk from here, I went all the way downtown. I’m looking for my granddaughter, when I look, she walked up. “Grandma I’m alright, I’m alright.” I said, “I was looking because you were supposed to have an appointment in that building.”

I was screaming. Everybody had passed, on the bridge, we was talking and hugging each other. Crying. Oh, that was something. You could see everything from here, from the street. Just look up. And I’ll never forget that day. That was the worst day of my life. I said, I hope, I pray God that nothing like that happen again., 9/11 is . . . It’s cruel, and a lot of people is sick. I know people that work down there. Sick.

Oh, it was that bad odor. And I kept the window closed down. And I’m saying, “What’s that smell? Let’s close the window,” because you can breathe in that. A lot of people I know got lung cancer from that, you know? Another guy I know, he’s sick from that. People don’t want to . . . It’s just something . . . It’s so much. You can go outside and see [so much]. People don’t realize. From here, say like when you walk going to the F train, you just look around. You can see so much at night time, too.

12 OFFICERS

[The police] they always treated me nice now, because I know some of them. I know about 12 of them, maybe a little bit more. Some people, when I walk on the street, they know me, I know them. And we could call. We’d call Officer Mitchell up, Sal, and all of them. I know them. But they let me know Sal transferred, and I want to know where did he go? He would always come take us to shop. I never had no trouble. I can call, and I say Francis Scott, and they know that name. Oh yeah. And he say, “What you want?” They give out toys for Christmas. And we call them right now, would have called them, tell them to come. They’ll come right away. I never had no trouble.

I’m not kidding you, it was good. Because they’d take us shopping, if you call, they would take us food shopping in the big truck. And kids were saying, “Y’all going to jail?” They always treated us . . . I never had no bad experience.

LIFE IS SOMETHING ELSE

I was going to one doctor for 19 years. We know each other well. I asked so many questions, like, “How many operations you do?” Like that. “What type?” He said, “Go on your tablet and read about what’s going on.” So that’s why I was telling him, we need to get down to the bottom of things, you know? Because life is something else.

And I just don’t take a lot of medicine. I’m not that type that take a lot. I take my pressure pills, for my diabetes, I take that. And one more, I don’t take nothing else. They said everything alright until God is ready for me. I got a little arthritis, but that’s human, I’ve had this for years, because I was working in a field down South Carolina. You work in the field, you get up early in the morning, you go in the field and pick beans. Call it butter beans. You would pick them, put it in a crate. And you get 35 cents a crate. And if you get say, one, two, three, four or five crates, that’s a little money to be making, maybe $4 or $5. We pick a lot of beans. I did it for a little while. Then my grandmother . . . We didn’t have to do it, but we wanted to make extra money for our little self. I was 10. We would pick cotton. We would put water in the cotton so it would weigh more.

[My grandmother] said, we didn’t have to go help other people. She would tell us, if we wanted to go help our uncle. But we said, “Mommy, Uncle Ben didn’t pay us,” so we wouldn’t go.

A lot of people didn’t have that. A lot of people didn’t have food. And we could eat chicken, anything that we had. We had everything. A garden, collard greens, cabbage, string beans, okra. You name it, we had it. Watermelon.

We were just mischievous. We would just . . .Those was my cousins, they live with us. my grandmother helped raise them. Robert, Catherine, Luther, Harrison. Four would live with us, and Harrison, he died. But that was my heart. That was my uncle’s son, my grandmother raised him. He was in service. And the rest of them. . . Catherine, she’s in Georgia. She had a stroke, and a heart attack. It just hurt me so bad. She lost her daughter too.

WORKING AS A DRESSER

My cousin Janie, she was telling me they need another dresser. I said, “Okay.” I went, and the lady name is Dorothy, she’s dead now. Miss Summers. She would get all of these jobs at The Waldorf, The The Plaza Hotel, we’d go work. The girls would come in line, we would dress them.

I would have three or four, I would have to dress them, one, two, three, go out. One, two, three, go out. And they would trust, [have] all their jewelry and their money [around]. [They] had a security person for the jewelry. He had a pistol on, he was like a cop still.

I went, we used to go from New York, Hampstead, Long Island, we would go Upstate to those big . . . where they play golf. Big places. And we would be the dresser. And we had to go to this club. Oh, not the Playboy Club. I forgot the name of this club we used to go to. We used to go in Jersey, the fashion show over there. We made money during that time, real money.

I’ve been doing this business a long time. I work at Seventh Avenue on the 11th, 12th floor. 1400 Broadway. I remember a guy called Lou Ross, he was a Black singer. I worked with him. You know, not to touch nothing. And when the guy from Africa was here, [he used to be in prison for a long time, yes. Nelson Mandela] we couldn’t go for lunch, we [had to] stay in, because they guarded him. We couldn’t go in the elevator. Stayed in. We couldn’t go. He had a $700 suit. Very nice. But when time for him to go, we shook his hand, he greeted us. And I want to ask him some questions, I was going to ask him something about when he was in jail, but he didn’t have time.

[One time] they couldn’t find this girl’s gold pin or something. So they said, “Come here Scotty.” I said, “Check.” [They] said, “Scotty, no, you don’t have nothing.” I was too angry. We’re looking for the jewelry [all over]. This young lady had it. [Another dresser had it and she pretended to find it.] She said, “Fine it’s right here, Francis.” I said, “You know you’re lying.” I told her, I know. They didn’t know she [just] put it back there. She didn’t say “I had it on,” but everybody know.

I’m sitting down, I said, “You look at my bag?” [The cop] said, “I’m not talking to you Scott, you don’t have nothing.” He said, “I know who did it.” I felt so bad. I felt bad. [The girl] said, “They tell me I can’t come back.” I said, “I have nothing to say.”

ANYTHING I DO, I TRY DO MY BEST

I had a couple of jobs. I would work midnight at the post office, and when I get off in the morning, go and do fashion. I was . . . ’84. I was working in ’84. My grandson was born in ’84. Oh, I worked, midnight, do that job, come home and sleep, get up at 10:00 and go to work again. I worked. And at the post office they gave me all these awards, I never was late. Never missed a day. Only time is the day my mother got sick. I learned the scheme, I did everything. anything I do, I try to do my best. I’m older now. I don’t rush to do anything no more. I slow down. I keep my house clean, that’s it. And I make sure I cook. And I come to the [senior] center, and see what’s going on. If it’s not right, I tell them. I do.

I HAVE FAITH

I haven’t been to church for long. I used to go to church every Sunday, Methodist. I used to go to church in Manhattan. And I was baptized three times in the water. I stopped going. Every time I looked, they wanted money, money, money. Because I raised up in church, my grandfather was a preacher. My mother-in-law was a preacher. My uncle was a preacher. And I just backed off. But sometimes I go to Open Door Church right on the corner down there. But I don’t go much like I used to. I used to go all the time. Like I told everybody, it’s good to go, but still. . . it’s a money thing, it’s a scheme thing. I know that. I know how it works. That’s because all my own family is preachers and deacons, and things like that.

But certain things, I love faith, I have [faith]. I got God right here in my heart. Church is a temple you go and worship in, I tell everybody. You go worship there. You can worship in your house, but that’s a temple that you go into.

I’ll go every now and then to visit. But not to join. I done been in so much church. I was in this church, you remember Jim Jones? I went. He had a session there, and when my cousin was there he wanted us to go over to that place. I’d have been dead. But we didn’t go [to more than one session]. I heard they got killed, that’s why . . . oh my God. But everything was nice [at that event]. And he says, “Give the donation. Get in line.” He said $10 or $20, I give $2. And [after you give, they give you a number] they give my cousin the same number that he give me. You know what the number was? 198. That’s what they give. He said, “198.” So I told cousin, “What did he give you?” I’m saying, he’s a liar.

PLAYING THE NUMBERS

I learned to gamble when I was [10]. . . Yes, I did. I learned to gamble, blame it on my [grand]father. It was a lot of older people, nice people, they would go out gambling, different things, casino. And I was a little girl. But my grandfather was well known, [so] I could go places like that. And he let me gamble, and I was gambling ever since. I was gambling since I was 10 years old.

See years ago they used to play two numbers in Florida. Two balls come out. I say 28. So my grandfather put $10 or $20, maybe make $200 sometimes. In New York City here, if you play boleto, for $1 you get $80. But if the whole number come out, three numbers come out, you get $7 or $800.

Last time [I was at a casino] I win only $400. That’s the machine you pull down, yes, the slot machine. And guess what, I left my card in it too. But I got another card.

I think I want to go to Vegas, that’s where I think next. That’s where I want to go. And I told the girls, “Make sure everything paid. I want to go to Vegas.” So we were talking about a group of us . . . I was supposed to go, but something happened. I can’t think what really happened. I was supposed to go. [Instead] I had to go to the drugstore and gamble my number.

SHIRLEY SCOTT

I told you, my daughter died, I don’t have . . . I have grands. I don’t have my daughter. I had one child, and she died with bone cancer, and she left two kids.

Shirley Scott. Shirley Ann Scott. My baby. That was my heart. Oh God. I think about it often, she was alive. It bothers me so much. But she was so good to me. But she had a habit. She start doing drugs. And she said, “Mommy it’s not your fault. You’re a good Mommy.” And when she died in bed, the doctor, she . . . I had to get the lawyer, because I had to be in charge. And the doctor said and the lawyer said, “Everything you said, your daughter said. Yeah. You’re a good mother.” She said, “Mommy, please don’t put my son away. Raise him for me.” And after she died, and my mother died right after that, I had to go in the hospital, because I just took sick, you know? I lost over 20 some pounds.

So, she left two kids, her daughter is 45 [now]. The daughter got three kids. Her son, he don’t have no kids, because he’s an autistic kid. I got to take care of everything. He know how to do everything for himself, but not read. He do certain things. But he put a run on my life. He ran away three times from school. [He jumped a turnstile.] But the cops [just made him pay for his own ticket], they were so nice. They got him, and they said, “You got a good grandmother.”

[And] the school was so nice to me. When he graduate I didn’t have to pay for nothing, they pay for everything. In my life I had some good people. Right now at Brooklyn Friends, you heard of that private school? You look it up. Mr. Phillip is the principal there. My girls go there. My girls be there.

GEORGE SCOTT

My husband, George Scott. I can’t think of how we met. Oh Jesus, we from the same hometown. Oh, I knew his twin sister. I knew his twin sister, and that’s how we met. His twin sister named Willie May, she’s in Jacksonville, Florida. And that’s how he met. First I didn’t like him or something, you know, but we started talking.

[I was] 15 I think, I don’t remember. But I was a little fresh girl. Yes I was, I was fresh. He was a smart man, very smart, slick. Oh, smart. He could make anything. He could sew, anything. But he was too slick for himself. Very good man. But we had some good laughs. Some little things, no big things, but it was . . . He knew I was a person that didn’t take no pushing. He knows. He always paid the bills. I had one bill I would pay. I think when we came here, I paid the cable bill. And it hurt me to pay the cable bill, but I know I should pay it. But he would always make sure food in the house. He would fix everything in the house, I didn’t have to do nothing. I would get lazy. Nothing be wrong, I just played sick.

Yeah, during that time, [in the beginning], he’d come to the house, all dressed up. And then we got together and start talking, and then he start coming [again]. Because they couldn’t stay but two hours to your house. You’ve got to keep your door open. [My grandmother would] say, “What you doing?” I said, “Why?” Try to be smart. She see me, she would put her hand on my head. But it was good . . . And then [there was] this other guy that I liked, but he was a swinger. He had a lot of women, he’d run around with girls, and he would talk about it. My grandmother didn’t like him, that one. But she liked my husband.

[George] was so different.

Most of them have to have respect, because those people didn’t play at the time. And if the boy come to your house, at nine o’clock he better be gone because your family says that means you have to go. I had [a lotta fun] with him. I miss my husband dearly.

George. Everybody know George. Scott. Everybody knows. He was a dresser. Oh, he was a dresser. And every time we go out, we’d get dressed.

Oh, we partied down. We come off the train. Oh I think about it, no, I don’t want to bring up the past! We’d come off the train, subway, oh God, we had fun. He wasn’t a dancer. I was a dancer. Oh I would dance. I’d dance so much, I think about it. I would get up every Saturday, get a dress, something to wear. Got to look nice when you go out. And you think about them days . . .

So what next?

Return

Seretha Winfield-Alexander

Interview location: Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza
When: Spring 2019

MY NAME

My name is Seretha Winfield-Alexander. On my birth certificate, they have my name as Ceresa, C-E-R-E-S-A, but the midwives put my name as Seretha, S-E-R-E-T-H-A. So in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the state where I was born, they have me registered there as Ceresa, so I’m in and out of different names. My mother died in 1950, so I came to live in New York with her sister, 1951, and one of my aunts started calling me Rita. So also I’m known as Rita. So I have about four different names. And however, by getting there, it’s always Winfield-Alexander. So that is my name. Lots of names. But I guess you really have to know who you are, so you don’t let anyone define you. You have to know yourself and who you are.

I got used to the name Rita when I came to New York, but growing up as a little girl in Virginia, it was Seretha, and I just accepted it as that until I came to New York, because I really didn’t use the Ceresa. Except now professionally I’m known as Seretha Winfield-Alexander.

NURSING

I’m a registered retired nurse. I started as a practical nurse and I became an RN, went back to school, and I ended my career, I retired 1997, as a nursing director, acting nursing director, because I just went out of the system, said it’s time to go, so I did that.

I really enjoyed the nursing, but before the nursing, growing up in Virginia, I always wanted to be an elementary school teacher. But then when my mother died, I came to New York to live here, and in the neighborhood there was my sister’s friend who was in nursing at one of the vocational high schools. The guidance teacher in the 8th grade thought I should go to a vocational high school because growing up in the South, the teachers quote unquote “were not that qualified, so I’m gonna send you to a vocational high school.” So I went to Yorkville Vocational High School, and they had nursing.

I got into the program there. The last year of high school, you work a month and you go to school a month. I didn’t do that well on the exam, the entrance, but God bless her, Ms. Berkowitz said, “I’m gonna give you a chance to get you going in your career.” She was a nurse herself. And thank God, it worked out well. For that year that I graduated, in 1956, I ended up giving the speech to the whole auditorium, [in] which I said, “Wow, for someone that didn’t feel like they could go through the program, here I am giving this speech.”

So that was the first part of nursing. I took the exam and I became a licensed practical nurse.

The other part of it, as I started working and getting to know other nurses,[and one of them], she says, “You’re doing the same thing as a practical nurse, licensed practical nurse, and you’re not getting paid like an RN. Why don’t you go back to school to be an RN?”

But at that time, my ego was not . . . my self-esteem was not high up to be a professional registered nurse, because they, through the years, had put me down already. But over a period of time I said okay, because so many nurses came to me. They said, “You’re doing the same thing. Why don’t you go back to school?”

And then I registered at Brooklyn College before the open enrollment, so I have to take all these remedial courses, algebra and all of that, to qualify to get into Brooklyn College. And then once I qualified—it’s like going back to high school all over again, that’s what I tell everybody—I went like high school all over again.

And what happened, I got on the elevator and my neighbor said, “You’ve got your books. You want to go to college?” I said yes. So she told me about Pace College, which is now Pace University, and she said, “There’s a community program that can get you in.” And this way I was able to get in Pace University under the community scholarship there. And then I did my RN there for the two year program, because they had the four [year] program, was up in Westchester. [I] said no, I’m not gonna go to Westchester, let me finish here. And thank God I was able to finish the program, and then I passed the state boards, become an RN, so I got my white cap with the black band, because that was the thing in those days, the black band around your hat that kind of made you stand out as a registered nurse.

As I was going along, I said, you know what, I’m gonna register at NYU to get into their program, public administration, health, something like that, public administration. I’m not gonna go for the accounting and like that because I don’t want to get involved with that. And I did that. So I ended up getting my masters in public administration from NYU.

I always encourage others to do the same, the nursing. And once I hear about the young girls who’s in college or high school and they want to become a nurse: You can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. Just go right ahead and enjoy it, because it’s rewarding, because you can work nights, you can work evenings, you can work days, you can go to school, and if you get married, you and your husband can split the time, one can work nights and one can work . . . It’s such an opportunity. And then for those who want to go into the service, you can go into the service and you become an officer at the same time. You can go into education or whatever you please.

AFTER RETIREMENT

Once I finished the nursing career, I retired 1997 from the city, with say 25 years, and my sister said to me, “You always wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Why don’t you go down to the Board of Education and see what they have to offer you?”

I went down. They offered me substitute teaching. So I did that for three years at one of the elementary schools, and they wanted to send me to Williamsburg to get a full time [position] and go back to school and get the license. But at that point, I said I have my pension, I have my health insurance, let me go do something—because now I’ve been working since I was 17—[let me] go back and enjoy something like learn the computer, learn to swim, and learn other things and help others along the way. And that’s what happened. And here I was, enjoying life and meeting people and getting involved in all of the community senior centers that I can get in and get involved with and get to know other people and get involved and just move right along.

LIVING IN BROOKLYN

I live Park Slope, between 5th and 6th Avenue, on 5th Avenue, 6th Street.

Actually we moved there the end of 1977, of December, January. I got married in 1975, was living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and my husband was from Trinidad. He’s deceased now, [since] 1987. He brought me into the Park Slope area. I didn’t know anything about the Park Slope. I knew the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, that area. I didn’t know anything. I knew some parts of Brooklyn, but nothing about the Park Slope area. The way it has blossomed now with prices and everything.

And when we moved, on 5th Avenue, there was this wall, this brick wall. It had to do with Washington, with the war and everything. There was a brick wall there. And I would go into the park [by the old stone house], and they had a lot of marijuana smoking and different people. After a while, they tore that brick wall down. And when they tore [the wall down], the area changed somewhat. And then the nannies and the children would come into the area and it revitalized that whole area. But the old stone house is still there.

Just to see how the community has changed, it’s amazing. Of course the rents went up and the value of the houses went up, so you gotta keep everything up to date if you want to get a good price for anything. And everybody is coming into the neighborhood, the artists. And then you see the parades now.

And you see the kids, and a lot of parents are bringing their kids in because MS 51 is there, so a lot of parents do different addresses to get their kids in that school, and then 321 on 7th Avenue, so you just see the changes that’s been there. It’s been great.

It’s great to see how everyone can live together and work together. Sometimes I have to say, you know, I’ve been around here a long time. You’re looking at me like I just got here, but I’ve been here.

MOVING TO THE CITY

[When I first came to New York I was 12], going on 13. The Lower East Side. Chinatown. Little Italy. So I knew all of that up in there, went to one of the junior high schools, 65 Charles Sumner. And then I didn’t go to the high school in the local areas because the guidance counselor wanted me to go to the vocational school in Yorkville. She felt that I could fit in. And the funny part of that, my brother, God bless him now, he’s deceased, Korean war veteran, he didn’t want me to stay in New York. He wanted me to go back to Virginia. So it’s like a week before I got really permission [from him] to stay here in New York and go to school in New York. And so that was great.

My mother had passed in 1950. My father was working with the Navy base down in Virginia, so he didn’t come. I had one more sibling left, so he and I both came. There were six of us at the time, now it’s five of us. So that brother who just graduated from high school, Booker T. Washington High School, we came up together. I lived with my aunt, my mother’s sister. She was very helpful. Thelma. Called her Big Thelma. I lived in her apartment. And actually, I had gotten good teaching from my mother before she passed, how to do this, how to do that, so I was able to do things. Clean the house, I was able to do that. My aunt was so proud of me. I would mop the floor, wax the floor, I would do all of that. [I was] so self-sufficient like that, and then I got some babysitting jobs around, with the neighbors and whatever. And then it’s time for high school. I went to school on that 1st Avenue bus, going up to 88th Street, 86th Street in Yorkville section of Manhattan.

As we matured enough, a lot of us started taking the train to go there. I remember my brother, he didn’t want me to ride the train. “You’ll get lost.” So I had to prove myself. I met up with others who would ride the trains at the same time, and we would gather together. And you would get to meet people, and I was able to do that, and that was good.

GOING OUT AND PLAYING BALL

There was some going out with the youth centers at the church and whatever, and I used to like to go see the guys play basketball.

Then I loved to play volleyball. At that time they really didn’t, with the height, they didn’t push it with basketball, they did a lot of volleyball. Now today it’s the basketball, because my daughter, she walked into high school, she was already six foot. The athletic teacher said, “You play basketball.” My daughter said, “I don’t know how to play basketball.” She said, “Well learn.” So her brother took her out to the park and taught her basketball, and then I sent her to one of the basketball camps in Philadelphia and then for four years she played basketball in high school.

Basketball and volleyball and track and whatever. But I enjoy, we did go out, and then the church would have some activities, a dance here and a dance there, and then of course the guys would kind of take over with the marijuana and with this and that and whatever. So yeah, there’s been some experience, but you just had to be careful going out there, and prayerful out there.

MEETING MACNEIL A. ALEXANDER

Actually [he was] sitting in Pace, [the library is] similar to here, he had a book. I took a look at [it], and it was economics, and economics was kind of getting to me, and I said, oh okay, he has the same book that I’m having. And I talked with him a few minutes . . . Yeah, so we had the same professors, I found out, different time. So he started helping me with the economics, and we got to know each other like that. And then as we started getting to know [each other], he said, “You know, I had seen you around.” I said, “Oh?” I didn’t know, I hadn’t noticed him until I noticed that book.

And then five years later, here we were. He said, “You know, I’m tired of living alone. Would you like to get married and everything?” Said, “Oh okay.” But I was a single parent before, so when you look back over your life, wow, how did I do that? What happened? But thank God for Pace and getting going and whatever. And then he ended up, my husband, going to NYU himself to get his PhD in international economics, but he passed before he finished that program.

But his daughter [Nicole] made up for it. She ended up going to school to be a doctor, and she is a doctor in infectious disease. So as we speak now, she’s public health director for the state of Rhode Island. The governor appointed her there. So she’s got about three more years, and then the term will finish, because the governor has done two terms already with that. So that’s been interesting. Last name Alexander. Macneil A. Alexander. Aldoofus, some middle name he has.

AT AGE 11

My daughter was 11 when my husband passed, so in fact the same thing happened to her. [My mother passed when I was that age.]

[Her death was] surprising because[my mother] had been sickly all along, with health issues, but not to the point that we thought that it would be the end of her life in 1950. September 2nd, Labor Day, and my birthday was September 23rd, so I turned 12 the same time, the same month or whatever. Whereas my daughter was 11, but her father died January 28th, and then she was 11 that September 15th.

GROWING UP IN VIRGINIA

Some memories go back to growing up in Virginia in a segregated area, going to segregated schools. And then knowing that we had Virginia Beach, which we could not participate in as people of color, except if you had to go to work there. So a lot of family members went there to work, but they couldn’t . . . The city or the government, they gave us a beach, our own beach, which they call Sea View Beach. That was for us to participate in and go to that, so we did get our own beach.

I remember with the firehouse not too far from us, they would come out, the firemen would come out on the hot days in Virginia and turn on the water hose and we would get a sprinkle water before we went to the beach. So there were some helpful issues there, that they saw that we . . . To cool off, they turned on the sprinklers overhead. Not like the fire hydrants when I came to New York and they would turn on those fire hydrants and whatever and blast you out with those fire hydrants. And that was nice.

[I remember] going to segregated schools and segregated movies, and this was your section. Church Street was our section. Grammy Street was for the white section. But I loved the parades, when the parades came, then we could go to Grammy Street and we could see the parades, and I loved the Armed Forces parade, like July 4th or the Labor Day. I loved the parades, to watch the stepping people in their uniforms and everything.

MILITARY THOUGHTS

And in fact one time I thought I wanted to go into the Armed Forces, military, but in the 50s just before my brothers went into the Korean War, Korean conflict at that time, says “no, that’s not the right place for girls.” Because at that time, ladies didn’t have the best name in the Army, in the military. So I said, well okay. So I just concentrated on my schoolwork. . .

And then later on when I met some of the nurses and they were signing up for the reserves, so we went down to sign up for the reserves, and then the guy said, “One thing about you nurses, you wait for the last minute, and you’re gonna be past the age by the time you sign up and everything. It’s gonna be too late for you to be in the reserves.” And that was the end of my military. The beginning and the end of my military thoughts, so I just stayed with the nursing part of it.

I just think about it, because at that time, you would have been an officer or whatever at the time. But no regrets, I just let it go. I just realized I had the career in nursing and then just helping others along the way, and that was it.

FITTING IN ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE

On the Lower East Side there, we had the Italians, the Jewish, the Puerto Ricans, and I was good. I always remember this one young lady, Anne, I think she was Italian, [and] Teresa, she was short, and we used to all talk because I was already tall and everything. And the only thing I would get teased about [was] my accent. I would say, “Aunt, aunt,” and they would say, “No, it’s ant.” I said, “I don’t have an ant, I have an aunt.”

Actually, it was an all girls high school and there was some changes going on there with the girls and whatever in the school, and one of the students said to me, she said, “Are you afraid of me?” I said, “No, I’m not afraid of you.” But it was trepidation of trying to mingle with people who were doing things not what you were used to doing and whatever. But as far as the segregation [by neighborhood in NYC], I don’t remember having any problems with that, because I think the Lower East Side was a good start for people coming together, to be together as one.

[There were some neighborhoods you had to be careful in.] My brothers, they experienced [that] in Knickerbocker Village. That was down by the Manhattan Bridge, and they had to be careful walking that way, But I didn’t go that way.

BEING A MOTHER

Well the first child as the single parent was my son. my son Terrence. I think I was about 25, something like that. 25, 26. As we speak, April 4th he’ll be 55, so I have to count my fingers.

It’s one of those situations I look back on and . . . but anyway . . . how I got myself in that situation, that’s what I be thinking about. But thank God we made it, made it through. He was able to be educated, and I was able to be educated and so forth. And then he ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania where he ended up playing football as a running back.

But he got injured there. After his first year, he got injured. “What am I gonna do without football, Mom, what am I gonna do?” He did some basketball but was more interested in football than basketball. And then just decided to work, entrepreneur and this and that and whatever. And then he got married, and now he has four kids. They’re like two years apart, the four. Yeah, so they’re right there [in Park Slope]. I have a brownstone that I’ve been blessed with right there, so they’re right there.

I managed [the kids and] working, and then when I want to go back to school, I just went and let the government help me for a little while. Whether they call it through the social service or welfare department, just for a little while, until I got the full-time job and was able to finish the program that I was in.

9/11

In fact, I got called to sub at 321, and when I got to school that morning, 8:00 or so, and one of the teachers said to me there’s something with the World Trade.

And I said, “What? No.” “Well I wouldn’t be kidding about anything like that.”

So I went into my classroom, and then of course we heard the rest of what had happened and everything. I started out with about 25 kids that day. Before the day finished, or middle of the day, I had about seven kids because the parents start coming taking their kids out of school.

And then my son said, “You want to come home, Mom? You wanna come?”

I said, “No, I’ll stay here and be with the kids and see how I can help the ones who have been affected by this, or those who cannot be picked up to be taken home.”

So I won’t forget that day.

BLACKOUTS NORTH AND SOUTH

The blackouts. Couldn’t go to work . . . we used to have something like that in Virginia too, with the blackouts before, in the ’40s I think. They used to come around and say, “Put those lights out up there. Put those lights up there.” That was before the war and after the war, ’42, ’43 or something like that. They would come around and have blackouts during that time, so I went through [and turned them off]. I was in Norfolk, Virginia, where I was born, and that’s Virginia’s largest city, is Norfolk, Virginia, because we have the Navy there, we have NATO and the Navy ship, the Navy base, things like that we have there. I just remember the lights had to go out and you couldn’t go out, you couldn’t do anything.

And then, [in New York] I thought about the subway strike, when they had that. You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t go to work and whatever. [During the blackout] You wanted to be careful and not to go anywhere where a lot of looting was going on and whatever. Just be prayerful if you wanna go out there. Wherever the blackouts were—Brooklyn, Manhattan, no matter where they had the blackouts, and the downtown, the stores, the shopping areas—they were breaking the windows. People from outside [the community]. Another time we had something with a hospital, we couldn’t get out. That must have been the blackout time too. And those who were there at work, you had to stay. I remember sleeping in a crib one night because we couldn’t get out to go home. Maybe that was the subway strike, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I remember staying in the hospital and you couldn’t go home.

MEMORIES OF SUMMER

It’s free time, then going to the beach. I was thinking about when school out, elementary school, it was like a square, so we would get on our roller skates and skate around the school. That was nice. That was really nice. Loved that. And then we had the maypole day in April, the first of May, and we would go around and wrap the maypole. That was interesting. And I remember my brother, his class made the initials for the school, SCA, so Samuel Armstrong school or something like that, and they formed the letters with the[ir] bodies.

And then going to the beach and you had the free time for the beach, and riding the amusement park rides. When I came to New York, I loved the Cyclone. Loved riding the Cyclone and the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster. But I’d never forget a time when I was riding one of the rides at Coney Island, I must have been about 15, 16 years old, I had babysitting money in my pockets, with change, and when we turned upside down, all my hardworking money fell to the ground.

ROLLERCOASTER

My last experience with those type of rides as I matured was in Virginia, Williamsburg, Virginia. I went to go on with my daughter once so she wouldn’t be alone and I was dizzy, and I think, as I matured I think it was time for me to stop those rides because of the effect. Because I remember once we were in Florida, was that Disney World? The Space Mountain ride, my husband and I got in line to go, then we read the sign, “If you’ve got a heart condition, you’ve got this, you’ve got that. . .” We got out of the line. We said, “Nope, we’re not gonna do this.”

When I got back to the job and they says, “Oh, Ms. Winfield,” that’s my maiden name that they were using on my job, “You didn’t go on Space Mountain?” I said, “No, we read that sign, we weren’t gonna go take a chance.” So when I told my son about it, he said, “Mom, Space Mountain is only a rollercoaster in the dark. That’s all it is.”

So the next time I went back to Disney World, guess who went on the rollercoaster? Because I remembered what he said. I just closed my eyes. Because one thing I like about the rides, I love to close [my eyes] and scream. And one of the kids said, “Why do you like to scream?” I said, “That’s the fun of it, is screaming.”

LIFELONG FRIENDS & MY 80TH BIRTHDAY

Actually there was one [lifelong friend from the time of roller skating in the summers], but she ended up with Alzheimer’s and in a nursing home in Baltimore, Virginia. We went all through elementary school together, 1st grade, and she was the one. So that was from Virginia. But coming to New York, one of my high school friends. I just had my 80th birthday in September last year, and the one person I went to high school with, she came down.She could’ve gone to one of the academic schools, but she went to Yorkville and she graduated and then went into nursing, become a nurse practitioner and everything.

And I said to her, “Gwen, what high school did you go to?” She says, “We went to the same high school. Don’t you remember? We graduated at the same time.” I said I didn’t remember that, because she was so academically up there that I had forgotten that she came to the vocational high school, but she wanted to do the nursing so she went there. Gwendolyn Robinson. So she went there and now she’s married and she has kids. But it was nice seeing her, all the way from going through high school together and everything.

In fact we had [my 80th birthday party] at the Fort Hamilton community center, because my brother being a veteran at that time, he got it for us. But now you don’t have to be a veteran to use the community center. It’s open to the community. And when my daughter graduated from medical school, we had her party there, so we all remembered the Fort Hamilton place. And a lot of people like it, to go there. We did the red velvet cake, and that was nice. We did that. And then family, friends, grandkids, grandkids invited their friends, so it turned out to be a lot of people. And then from the different senior centers that I go to, I invited them and the church group. So they all liked it.

TRAVELS TO AFRICA

I’ve been to Nigeria, Kenya twice, and South Africa.

Okay, well it started with Nigeria. One of my coworkers’ husbands, Dr. Anjoko, professor with Arturo College, was taking the college kids there, and he said, “You can invite some of your friends along.”

So we went along with the college students and got a chance to visit the president’s house. We went to a wedding, and the husband and wife dressed in the same type of outfit, and then when a baby was born, all the celebration was going on in the neighborhood when we were passing the neighborhood, and we saw that. And then of course we passed the area where [it was] prayer time for the Muslim group, and they were there praying out there.

[To] Kenya, we went with T.D. Jakes ministry and we did a mission. So my daughter being the doctor, she did the doctor side. I did the nursing with the blood pressures and everything. And so that was nice. And then the next time we went back to Kenya, a friend of hers she had met while being up in Providence got married, and he invited us to the wedding in Kenya. So we went there and people thought we were VIP. But when they realized that we weren’t the VIPs they were thinking about, that was interesting, they thought we were a white group coming. No, we were the black VIPs in the family. They treated us so nicely there.

And then when I went to South Africa, we did another mission group. We went to South Africa, and my daughter did the medical part and I did the nursing part. Now I didn’t get to Cape Town, but we did do a safari. We did a few things. We gave up the Cape Town part so we could do the mission.

I’m trying to get to Ghana, so someday I gotta get that worked out. I wanna go back to get some of the history of the slave and the trade and see some of that.

A CLOSER DESTINATION

I’m gonna go down to Augusta, Georgia, which I haven’t been there, but I met this church group when I was at another affair. They told me, come down to Augusta, and then from Augusta, they’re gonna drive down to Tampa, Florida, and then from Tampa, Florida, I’ll come back, spend a few days in Augusta, Georgia, and then come back to New York.

Everybody, you know, talk about Atlanta, you know Atlanta. And then my brother reminded me, James Brown is from Augusta. And then they told me they have a statue of him in Augusta. Yeah, I’m gonna check that out when I go there. Yeah, so traveling, while I can do as much as I can, God’s willing. Love it. And then I’ll say, “Oh there’s no place,” and my grandchildren would finish it, “Yeah, Grandma, there’s no place like home.”

MY SIBLINGS

We try to have [sibling reunions], in fact we were just talking about it last night, my brother said there’s a nice place in Brooklyn, one of the parks, he wants me to come check it out. Or we’ll go to Virginia. We’re planning one 2020 to go to Virginia. All five of us. There were six of us, [Willie, Jimmy, Clyde, Goldie, Abraham, Seretha.]

Then the one died, my brother Jimmie was a Korean veteran, he died about three years ago. We’re all here [in New York]. Left dear old Virginia. But we always. . . like my daughter said, “Mom, you were in Virginia about four times this year already.” Sometimes we go back a lot, and sometimes we might not go.

My oldest brother will be 90. August 24th. And he’s a singer. So you may have [heard of], the Doo Wops, “A Sunday Kind of Love” and “Life Is But A Dream.” That’s my brother, Willie Winfield. He’s the lead singer there, of The Harptones. In fact, April 1st or 6th, that’s gonna be his last singing engagement, so they’re having his last singing engagement for him there.

And funny thing, he started singing when he was young and at the beaches, the Black beaches in Virginia, and then he went to sing in the church one Sunday, and he said, my mom said “Make sure you don’t sing any of those other songs in the church.” He says, “No, no, no, I’m gonna sing a church song in the church.” He sang a church song. And then the four of them used to sing together one time. The brothers used to sing, and the brother-in-law, but that didn’t work out too well because they went different ways. But my brother Willie just stayed with the singing and the Doo Wops. In fact, you’ll see his name, Willie Winfield.

There’s four boys and one sister. And I have a younger sister [Mary-Magdalene] who died when she was about 19 days old. 1939 she was born. Those years they didn’t operate on you. She had spina bifida. Her spine was curved. They didn’t operate, so she lived to be about 19 days old. I remember my brother said he remembers seeing my mom crying. It’s so amazing how kids pick up things, because I thought I knew her by going to the bed and trying to pull off the bed, but [she] was only a year younger. So what happened, I probably heard people say that I used to go to the bed and try, but I don’t remember. I was only one years old myself. But you know how kids hear things and memorize it or whatever. And then my brother, who’s 1937, and then we go on.

[I was closest to] the youngest one, who’s a year older than I am. And then when he came to New York, even before the rest of us, then it was my other brother, we came up to New York together. He just turned 86, February 27th. So I said, “Oh, you’re 85.” “No, I’m 86.”

We became close. And he was the first one that graduated from high school. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Virginia, one of the segregated schools at that time, which is not segregated anymore. And then my oldest brother, we became somewhat closer, but we’re just all close together. And then funniest thing about it, about three weeks ago, I was in Arizona for about two weeks with my nephew there, and his father is the one who passed about three years ago, Jimmie. So he’s saying to me that he didn’t realize how the siblings were so much alike, but he could see his dad in me. I said, “It’s amazing you saying that. I can see my brother in you.”

QUIET HOUSE

[We] grew up with a very quiet mother and a very quiet father. And I remember at work one of the coworkers said, “You are so quiet.” I said, “You should have been in my house. My mother was quiet and my father was quiet.”

It was subdued, yeah. Because my brother would say my father did not play, so he knew what a belt was, you know. Whereas my mother was very quiet with it, you know.

And [my mother] taught me, as I was saying before, how to do things. A lot of things she wanted to do before she got sick, to really teach me to cook. She showed me some things, how to iron, how to do this, how to clean, whatever.

[She used to cook] the chicken and the baked turkey . . . My father made the biscuits. He was the biscuit person, you know. But other than that . . . She had gotten sickly, so we really weren’t doing too much of cooking or whatever, but we just made . . . things together.

They would celebrate [holidays] quietly. Of course we didn’t have the money, but we had a way, my mother had a way. You can get coupons, or you go down to the Goodwill or something, and you would get coupons.And I remember passing the windows with the Santa Claus *sings* and the ho! ho! ho! you know, and then we’d go get our toys like that. I think we did have a little tree, but not too much of a tree. But we didn’t have the telephone because you have to use the neighbor’s phone across the street, because they worked with the telephone company, what they call the Chesapeake Phone Company, and we didn’t have a television. I remember when I saw my first television, [I] was passing a window. Said, “Wow, what is that?” You would see a television. When I came to New York of course, I was able to get all of that.

SOUNDS IN THE QUIET

I remember the Philco radio. Remember putting the ear to the radio to play the radio, [which] was big like a furniture. But we were country music because of my dad. He loved country music. He played the guitar. He had a brother who played the guitar. And then a cousin, his cousins would play the harmonica, so they had their own little band going on, everything. But the country music, I just happened to talk about that the other day because somebody told me how they loved country music, I said, “Well I had no choice.” The radio, the country music, we had that. And then with my mother it was the stories, Stella Dallas or whatever, listening to the stories, like the soap operas.

You sit and listen, because it didn’t stay on that long. You sit and listen. At least we knew she was home, and [she listened] when she didn’t work, because she did a lot of work too. So that was interesting. And hearing the country music. Old time country music. Roy Acres, and one of those names. And then finally they got a black country music singer. My dad loved him.

AMTRAK PERSON

Before my mother died, she was gonna come to New York. They wanted to try the doctors here in New York, but she had gotten too sickly. My father stayed in Virginia until 19-, I’ll say about ’77 or something, and then I got him up here because he had retired, but then he had a stroke, so he died here. We took the remains back to Virginia.

My mother would come here to New York because my brother, Jimmie, who passed, he was here. He got his tonsils taken out here. And then my sister was here, so a few of them had started coming this way, so she would come then. But most any trips we did was just around in Virginia or something like that. But I was telling someone, I’m an Amtrak person, because I learned how to. She did the Amtrak train, my mother. We did the buses somewhat, just locally, but for longer trips, we did the Amtrak.

And [we took] the ferry. Because when you left Virginia, you’d cross over [with the] Cape ferry, [to] Cape Charles, [and from there] you took the train. [The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel replaced that old ferry after 1964].

[The old ferry was] segregated. But I used to love to get on the ferry, and you would hear the senior blacks talk about their hard times, what they had, and how segregated it was for them. I used to love to hear their stories. It was sad, but just to know that they were able to talk about those times that they had.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR YOUNGER PEOPLE

My encouragement is making sure [younger people] are listening to their parents or whoever is raising them, and believe in themselves, that they can do it, and don’t let other people define you and put you down. And you have to try, and you say you can’t do this, you can’t do that. How much time are you spending with social media? Are you taking some of that time and using it up wisely to enhance yourself? And then socialize and be with others and kind of encourage each other how you can do this and you can do that, because nothing is easy but you gotta try to see—hopefully and prayerfully—that you can do it.

If you need to get help, you reach out for help. And a lot of kids today are having some challenges mentally, you get help. There’s a lot of help out there. And physically, and when I see the kids walking down the street today, some physically challenged, I often say a prayer for them because those kids are struggling to get where they need to get to, and you have your health and your strength and you’re not doing what you need to do to better yourself, you’re gonna be lost in the shuffle. You gotta help yourself and help others along the way.

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Yvonne Hall

Da Ciro Italian restaurant on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn
When: Spring 2019

LISTENING TO THE BODY

I’ve lived [near] here five years now. I retired here. Before I lived in Manhattan, I lived in Pittsburgh, I’ve lived in Washington, I’ve lived in Philly. I left Pittsburgh traveling to Philly and then ended up in Manhattan in the early ’70s. Lived there for about 15 years and then went back to Pittsburgh for a while.

I loved living in Manhattan. I loved where I lived. I didn’t like my apartment, it was a back apartment on the 6th floor, window facing the back of another apartment, [but] it was in a great location. I could walk to Central Park, walk to the shops and I used to walk down to 34th Street to Macy’s and back on Saturdays. I walked everywhere. I loved Manhattan. I loved the flatness of New York. Pittsburgh is hilly. Hills everywhere. That’s the beauty, to me, of New York. Flatness where you can walk around. I can’t take advantage of it much now, but hopefully I will again. I like walking and I like the flatness.

I have a Rollator. I had a walker, but a Rollator allows me to get a little more speed and distance. I need both for balance when I’m out. [I’ve had the rollator for about a year now.]

I should be in physical therapy if I want to get to where I should be, but I’m not. I just haven’t put that as a high priority right now.

I guess because all of my medical issues that I have right now, which are too numerous to enumerate, my priority is just the basics of living. Sleeping, eating, the ability to bathe and clothe myself. Those kinds of things. Just to take care of me. If I’m able to do that on a daily basis, I’m happy. Doesn’t happen every day but I’m happy when it does. I can’t do it too much. If I do too many activities, I can’t do back to back activities. That’s what I’ve found. I need a downtime. I call it my downtime, where my body has to recuperate if I’ve done an activity the day before. The main thing is me adjusting to the new me. My body and my condition and everything, it’s changing and I’m trying to adjust to the changes that go with that.

When I came here [to Brooklyn], this was going to be my retirement. [Since it is so flat], I was going to be walking and doing all kinds of great things. I got sick and I had an illness that’s still with me. At my age, all that takes a toll on the body and you don’t realize it at the time. Some days when you’re feeling great, you say, “Okay, I’m back up to speed,” but you’re not. You want to be but you’re not and your body tells you, “Okay. You sit down now. You’ve had enough.” I listen to my body now.

ACTIVE NEIGHBORHOOD

I met Joan O’Bryan [the president of the] Willoughby Walk Senior and Retirement Group. We meet once a month and she introduces all kinds of activities that are available to seniors in the area, including the Myrtle Avenue Project. My introduction to them was the organic farm produce that they gave during the summer. $10, you get a bag full of organic vegetables. It’s fabulous. Then a brochure that they put [out] telling us where we can get discounts and things like that. That’s how I found out about the Writers Workshop [for senior citizens at Pratt]. I said, “Oh that sounds like something I could do.”

One of the things I wanted to do when I came back to Willoughby because of its proximity to Pratt, I envisioned myself taking courses, auditing some courses. I was like, “Oh, here’s my dream. This is what I want to be doing.”

I joined a bridge class. That’s when I got sick and I had to stop. That was a nice turnout of women that were interested. There was enough women, there are men too. There were men in the group, but there were enough older people to have time and interest and they could put together activities. A couple of Saturdays from now, [another group], they’re going to have a wine and paint [session], these [are the kind of] activities that go on.

FAMILY

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. Control, that was her MO. We had a nickname for her. The Raise we called her. The Raise, because she used to raise all kinds of . . . get after you. We would say “the Raise is on the warpath” or something like that. My father died when I was 12, so she was pretty much the disciplinarian in the home.

I never got into trouble. Never skipped school. One of the reasons is, the one time I did do something that was almost what you could call getting into trouble, was because the neighborhood had a grapevine. If something happened on the way home from school, by the time you got home, your mother already knew about it and you were already getting a tongue lashing at that point. Too many eyes were on you, so that was another deterrent from doing anything

[My father] was sick for a while. or six months he was sick. The last two or three months he was in the hospital. Every day after school I went to the hospital to see him until he passed away.

I’d walk to school. It was 10 blocks from the school to the hospital and then another, 20 blocks back [home].

[I] just sat by him. I don’t remember any real conversations. I remember just being there. My sister said she did [it too]. She came with me. She said she went. I don’t remember her. I just remember my own experience.

[After my father passed], my aunt, my mother’s sister came. We called her Aunt Mary to the rescue. She came and stepped in pretty much for quite a long time. I can’t remember time ranges. It seems like it was a while. She had three children, her three children came along with her so it was a houseful for a while.

My father [had] built us a dollhouse. It was more than a dollhouse, it was a playhouse in the backyard. We had a big backyard, and [it] had windows, real windows that went up and down with glass. At the beginning of the day, we were always outside playing in the yard doing something. My brothers [played] cowboys and Indians. [That was] the thing at the time. We lived near a supermarket and they would get their wooden carts and break them up and make rifles out of them. Then get bottle caps, the pretty, metal bottle caps, hammer those on the ends of the boxes and make saddles for the horses that they were making.

We [also] had dogs. No cats, we had dogs. Everybody came to our yard.

It was the hub [of our Pittsburgh neighborhood].

It was a very nice [middle-class] neighborhood. There were about 10 or 12 houses on the street and that pretty much was the neighborhood that we were contained to, or then the next block and the next block were others, but that block right there comprised our neighborhood. The children in those homes would congregate in our yard, until the lights came on. That’s when we came in. That was the time to come in. When the lights come on, you come in the house. Otherwise you were outside playing all day. Hide and seek or building things, cowboys and Indians. It was always something to do. Always.

[Sunday was] church day. Yes, go to church. Everyone seemed to go to different churches now that I think about it. In our particular church services were very long. We would spend at least two to three [really 3-4 hours] hours in church, between Sunday school and church every week. Then come home. Sunday was usually a big dinner day. Sometimes we would have to stop and help with dinner, but otherwise back to the routine of playing.

AN OLD LADY NOW

I have decided that I must be one of those old people you don’t bother with because you’re young and you’ve got things to do, places to go. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m an old lady now.

I used to think it was because of my life experience with different things that I could maybe offer some advice. That used to be true in the sense that I was solicited for advice or comment or whatever. Lately I don’t even get that I don’t think. I don’t think anyone is interested that much in my outlook or opinion. I think they feel they’ve outdistanced me in a way. I think they turn to other people for their life input, not me. Like I say, I’m just an old lady who’s frail and ill. I barely know who I am every day, let alone expecting other people to assess who I am.

PEER-to-PEER

That’s why I really have to say I find it more refreshing now to be with people my own age. The expectations are different. It’s more of a sharing back and forth. I feel liberated, I feel empowered, I feel I learn things that I didn’t know about myself or about life. When I’m doing it with someone my level or at least a professional in the field of dealing with aging people. I find it very comforting.

I was telling a friend that I met in the building about [a thing that upset me]. She said, “You stewed over that for three weeks. You should have found me so we could at least have laughed about it.” I said, “You’re right. I wasted three weeks of my life stewing over nothing.” Really it was nothing.

HEALTHY

I accept that if you have somebody who’s been there, they can understand quickly how you’re feeling, even dismissing it as . . . if you can laugh about a situation, which I’m always looking to do, it’s the healthy thing. I’m looking to be healthy now. I guess that’s the word I’m looking for. I’m looking to be healthy in mind, body and spirit more than anything else now. Whatever gets me there, that’s where I’m going to be.

AUNTS

The other day I was thinking of Aunt Mary. I’ve never had a relationship with [her]the way I have had in the past with my nieces and nephews. I’ve had more of a close relationship with them because of proximity. Aunt Mary, I just remember she came and she was a substitute mother, doing things. The same with my uncles that came, the conversations were pretty much with my mother, so there was no real interaction with them the way I have interaction with my nieces and nephews, like taking them places and that sort of thing. I guess that was the surprise.[that we no longer do that many things together]. I guess we’re both in transition.

I’ve just kind of deduced that because they have a mother, they have parents in their lives, that makes the difference. I’m relevant, but not as relevant as I think I am or would like to be. It’s all okay because if it’s meant to be it’ll come around again and if it’s not, it’s okay too. I’m prepared either way.

MY BROTHERS/BIRTH ORDER*

*This section was written. It grew out of our interview conversation about family and then expanded further based on a writing prompt during a workshop session. My mother gave birth to four boys. My brothers. One older than me and three younger. My oldest brother, by two years, became known as Father Rod because our father passed away when I was twelve years old. He would eventually walk me down the aisle at my first wedding, and forever be the one to give me pep talks when I needed them. His shoulder was always there for me, through my divorces, my surgeries, and my life transitions. He is the only living family member that has known me the longest.

My second brother, Maurice, was full of life, loved people and was a God-fearing man. He lived with me and my second husband for a summer. We became very close that summer. Years later he became a minister and pastored a church of thousands. I lived with him and his wife and four children for a while. Several years ago, he became critically ill and was in and out of the hospital for two years. The doctors called him the “Miracle Man” because the surgery they performed saved his life and they couldn’t explain what happened in the operating room. Everyone in my brother’s community knew it was the wide circle of ecumenical prayer groups that was responsible. I went to see him everyday while he was in the hospital. He eventually passed away.

My third brother, Lamont, was the opposite of my second brother. He had an encyclopedic mind. Dates, facts were his wheelhouse. Anything you forgot or wanted to forget he remembered where and when. He was always frail, but he too had a lot of friends. He suffered for years with a bad heart. He collapsed when he went to see his brother in the hospital so I was back and forth between them for a few days. Unfortunately, six years later he joined his brother in heaven.

My fourth brother, Antonio, my baby brother, recently, did something quite special for me. He offered to be my handyman for the day and asked what tools he should bring. I was so elated that he volunteered without any prompting from me. I held my breath until he came. I was so anxious I went to meet him downstairs in the lobby. He got to meet two of my neighbors, Dolores and her husband Issac. They were friendly and he liked them. I told him how they drove me to the voting polls. He was impressed. I said this is the kind of place I’m living in; people looking out for one another. After we spent two enjoyable days together, I cooked and he made repairs and put some furniture together, I suddenly realized how grown up he was, even though he has two children and is getting ready to be a grandfather. So I asked him to be my emergency contact person and responsible for my Medical Directive. He said, “Wow, I feel like an adult now.” We were both thinking the same thing, birth order does make a big difference.

My mother was the age I am now when she passed away. I am thankful and blessed that she had four wonderful boys that I loved and love dearly.

WORK-FAMILY

I just didn’t see my life being like [my mother’s] at all. More a sense of being opposite at the time, find something that had me live the kind of life she wasn’t [living]. I’ve come full circle and I can appreciate her life now more than ever. She really had a good life. She had nobody to boss her around, she was her own boss. It was a different world then too. I don’t think you can do it all anymore.

I don’t know. It makes a difference. If it’s a stay at home mom, I really believe that now. The whole world’s gone the other way with women working. The value was not whether or not you were marriage material, but now you had a job, your job determines your worth as opposed to other things. It’s done a total reversal. I don’t know where it’s going to end up.

That’s what’s so nice to see around here on Saturdays. The guys are out with the kids. That’s something I never saw in Pittsburgh. I’ve never seen as many guys out with their kids as I’ve seen here in Brooklyn. I think it’s wonderful. Pushing strollers and like, wow, this is . . . these women have the right idea. It’s their time to themselves or whatever.

TV WITH MY FATHER

We were, as a matter of fact, the first family in our neighborhood to have a TV set. Another reason everybody gravitated [to our house]. Friday nights was open house. Everybody could come and watch the TV. Packed. All the kids were on the floor and the parents were on the sofa and stuff. I remember that. I remember when we first got our TV. I don’t remember the brand or anything like that, I just remember the TV and how everybody came over.

He [my father] was the one, if anybody, he was the person who was “forward looking.” I think [that’s] the best way to say it. My mother was content with a lot of things. He always [wanted] the new stuff, “what’s new?” TVs were new, we’re getting a TV. That was him. He was responsible for us having a TV.

[My father] I remember enjoyed watching Edward R. Murrow shows. I watched that with him. I remember watching those programs with him. Nobody talked while Edward R. Murrow was on and the evening news. I always knew it was important to pay attention to certain programs. I learned that from him early on. He would sit very quiet and very still when the programs were on. A lot of things I can’t remember, but some things just stand out vividly in your mind. Snatches here and there, bits and pieces.

I can just remember sitting [on the floor] right next to him. It’s like it’s yesterday, the stillness and the seriousness of him at that time watching Edward R. Murrow. I sit there and be just as still and serious. This was an important moment.

THE BEST JOB

My mother was the only person who would say, “I hope you never get bored, I hope you don’t get bored.” I always remember her saying that and never accepting it, but realizing to a certain point she was correct. I do get bored easily, but because she was saying it, of course I was rejecting it.

[I worked a lot in administration. Administration] wasn’t challenging. I shouldn’t say boring. It wasn’t challenging, but it came very easy to me. I eventually had a business of my own. My sister and her husband started a print shop and after a while they gave it up. I took it over because I was there writing resumes and doing other things, so I eventually took it over. That job or that activity I enjoyed the most, owning the shop. It’s a whole different experience.

That was about ten years. I did like that. I liked the variety of it. The world that opened up to you. It’s a whole different world when you have a business of your own, as opposed to a job in an institution, the same kind of people are there. The business, the whole world opens up. I think I liked that. That’s what I enjoyed the most.

[Now] I am missing [work] very much. I’m trying to find something to do. This slowed me down. This illness [has slowed me down], I didn’t expect it. They tell you three months, we’ll get you in and three months you’ll be okay. It never happens the way they say, so my expectations have been thrown off. I had expected when I came back to be doing something. I’m open to new things.

GOD BROUGHT ME HOME

Every morning I [used to] listen to a program for a half hour, either at 7 o’clock or 10 o’clock every morning. It comes on television. Of course, every morning when I wake up, I thank God for all that he’s done, grateful for a new day and promise to be my best, to keep going forward in a new and productive way. My mother was the daughter of a baptist minister. She prayed religiously every day. She sang songs, she did everything. We grew up in the church of course, and somewhere along the line I kind of grew away from all of that. Now as I say, I’m all the way back in it, totally. I’m limited in terms of where I can go outside the home, but every day I feel I have a service in my home, my apartment. Every day I have a service, half hour, at least a half hour of service every day.

I feel I’ve been alone in a lot of decisions that I’ve had to make on my own and a lot of things I had to do on my own, and I don’t feel that I am really alone. One of the things [required at] my last surgery was, I had to bring someone. They told me, make sure you have someone to pick you up. I had a cold at the time Anyway, I called early in the morning and I said, “I have a cold. Am I going to be able to do this today?” She didn’t call back til 4 o’clock. She said, “As long as you don’t have a fever.” I said okay. In the meantime, it was too late to arrange for someone to come, so I got up in the morning and I said, “Me and god are going to this surgery together.” Walked out the door, had arrangements for [my] ride. As soon as I got there the first thing they asked me was, “Who’s picking you up?” I said, “God’s taking me back. I got here with him and he’s taking me home.” They did the surgery. It worked out all right. There was no complications this time, just that slow recovery, but nothing that dramatic. Yes, I believe in God. I walk with him everyday. I tell people that. I walk with him every day. He’s my companion, my friend, my everything.

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