Freddie’s Journey: A Place of Being

By Freddie Wright Grice

For author Freddie Wright Grice, moving from her home of forty-four years in Washington, DC, to Greensboro, North Carolina, at the age of seventy-three was a milestone in her quiet life. Her home that she purchased in November of 1961 held many memories of joyous occasions. Freddie prayed God would help her find a solution.

In Freddie’s Journey: A Place of Being, Grice narrates her life story against the backdrop of her home—from its purchase, to its renovations, and the important role it played in her family’s life. This memoir also includes a family history and shares anecdotes about Grice’s work as a nurse, her love of travel, and her active membership in her local church.

Through trials and tribulations, Grice tells about the decision to leave her home and Washington, DC, to move to North Carolina to be close to her son and his family. Grice shares how she feels safe and has found peace and quiet in her new community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Feb 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483423975

Book preview

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Prologue

The Wright Family History

The Jubeter-Golden Connection

Sookey Jubeter was born in 1810 in Caw Caw, Orangeburg, South Carolina. Sookey gave birth to a son, Wheeler Golden, in 1847. They were enslaved. But on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The viewpoint gained support on Capitol Hill, and on January 31, 1865, by a two-thirds majority, the constitutional amendment to do away with slavery became law. As April 1865 drew to a close, Negroes felt that they stood on the threshold of a new era. Slavery was dead. Wheeler Golden’s grandparents and great-grandparents had come to America from different parts of Africa as adults and had played a part in bringing this to pass, by participation in the four-year Civil War. Wheeler Golden, his family, and relatives felt that now they had a stake in America, and their future was here—not in Africa, Liberia, Haiti or elsewhere. The Jubeter-Golden family’s sense of identity with the land of their birth gave them the feeling that they mattered—they belonged. Wheeler married Hanna Owens, born in 1849 and also enslaved. They had three children born between 1869 and 1875; Owen (1869), Sarah (1871), Willie (1873), and Mary Golden, born in 1875, Bellinger’s mother.

In 1877, Wheeler and Hanna’s fifth child, Esmond, was born. Sadly, Hanna died giving birth to Esmond. Wheeler Golden, now a widower at the age of thirty, reconnected with his mother, Sookey Jubeter, a sixty-seven year-old widow. She came to Wheeler’s home and cared for his infant son, Esmond, and his four other children, ages two years to eight years. She brought with her a year fifteen-old half brother, Christian Jubeter, and a five year old nephew, Esaw Duckson. Wheeler Golden was thirty-nine when he married twenty-seven year old Candys in 1885. They had one son, Johnny, born in 1891. Candys Golden was the only mother that Mary knew and the only grandmother known to Bellinger.

Bellinger Golden was born on July 29, 1899, in St. Matthews, South Carolina. In 1906 Bellinger’s mother, Mary, died giving birth to David Sankie, Bellinger’s half brother. Mama Candys, as they called her, continued to care for seven-year-old Bellinger and the infant, Sankie. Candys taught Bellinger how to cook and sew. When Bellinger was about eleven years old, Mama Candys died. Bellinger went to Hopkins, South Carolina, to live with her father, George Floyd, and stepmother, Rosa. After a year with her father and stepmother, Bellinger was sent to Voheeves Boarding School in Denmark, South Carolina. Bellinger remained at Voheeves until she was eighteen years old. After she finished school, she returned to live with her cousins in St. Matthews, South Carolina.

In the beginning—the Wright Connection

Frederick Loman Wright, born 1897, was a farmer like his father, Aaron Wright, born 1860. Aaron taught Frederick the critical roles of being a good farmer. He also taught his son how to build a house with cement foundations. He taught Frederick to build sheds for farm tools and equipment and to erect strong fences to keep the cattle from roaming. Frederick always said that his father was a stern taskmaster who made sure that everything was done right. Frederick wanted to become more than just a farmer.

He joined the army on July 18, 1918, before the end of World War I and was discharged the same year, November 18, 1918, at twenty-one and one-half years old. He returned to his home in St. Matthews, where he met Bellinger Golden. The courtship lasted about six months before Frederick married twenty-year-old Bellinger on August 2, 1919.

Their first child, Frederick Jr., was born in June 1920; this child died in infancy.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith, he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country. By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed and she bore a child.

Hebrews 11:1, 8–9 (New King James Version,1982)

The Land of Promise

The Start of a Family in the New Land

Around this time, Frederick heard that companies in Washington, DC, were hiring skilled laborers as cement finishers on bridges. Upon arriving in DC, Bellinger and Frederick lived in Tenlytown with people they knew. Frederick worked on the Anacostia Bridge at Benning Road and other bridges in the Georgetown area. In 1921, Frederick and Bellinger moved into a house in the northeast Washington, DC, area and settled in the Deanwood section of the city on Clay Street.

In the following years, they had four children: Curtis Fenton, December 7, 1923; Lawrence Burwell, June 2, 1925; a male child was born and died October 17, 1927; Bernice Anita, December 21, 1928; and Gloria Etta, September 9, 1930.

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In June of 1931, the family moved from Deanwood NE to Gale Street NE. Curtis and Lawrence transferred from Deanwood Elementary School to Charles Young Elementary.

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The last two children born to Frederick and Bellinger were Freddie Mae, born August 27, 1932, in Hopkins, South Carolina, while Bellinger was on vacation with her aunt, and Pauline was born in December 1933.

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Pauline and Freddie

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

Gale Street NE is the only house that I remember. It was a large frame house on the corner with many windows. I remember playing with my younger sister, Pauline, when I was four and she was three. I was closer in age to Pauline than to Gloria, who was two years older than I was. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the radio announcer would tell us the time, and Pauline and I knew that our sisters, Bernice and Gloria, would be home from school, and we could go outside to play. I turned five in August 1937 and started school that September.

Pauline became sick that winter, and what we thought was a bad cold became pneumonia. Pauline turned four on December 23 and died December 31, 1937, at the Children’s Hospital on W Street NW. I did not know what it meant to die. I heard someone say that all children go to heaven when they die because the Lord chose them to be His angels. I thought it was a good thing that Pauline would become an angel.

As the five of us grew older, we were given responsibilities in the home. Curtis, the oldest child, had rheumatic fever when he was eight years old; the doctors told my mother that Curtis would not live to be nine. He lived to be sixty-four years old but had a weak heart as a result of the rheumatic fever. Curtis was never allowed to do strenuous work, so he helped Mama with the cooking. Our mother was a great cook; her grandmother had taught her how to cook when she was nine years old.

Lawrence, the next oldest, wanted no part of housework. He liked working outside the home doing odd jobs. His responsibilities were cutting wood for the five stoves in our home, stacking the wood, and piling the coal in the shed. My sister Bernice, the oldest girl, and Gloria, the next oldest, helped with most of the house chores. When Mama bought the electric washing machine with the wringer, we enjoyed washing the clothes. My mother had a fetish about keeping white clothes white; she continued to scrub the white clothes on the washboard using the lye soap she made. Gloria’s responsibility was to wash dishes after dinner and put them back in the cupboard.

Gloria hated with a passion ironing the long-sleeve white shirts that Daddy wore during the day when he worked as a barber in the barber shop after working his night job. Bernice and Mama continued to iron most of the clothes. The girls always had nice clothes to wear. We always had new clothes to start school and for Sunday, Easter, and Christmas. Our mother bought our play clothes from Goodwill. Bernice was the house decorator and clothes designer. Gloria and I helped Bernice wallpaper the living room and dining room and varnish the wood floor around the linoleum. The kitchen floor was all linoleum and the only floor that had to be scrubbed often. Our mother, Bellinger, was always a housewife, so she had time to teach us how to do things.

Bellinger pinched enough pennies to help Frederick provide some of the other good things of life for their kids (e.g., a red wagon, a radio, and a wind-up Victrola). Curtis became passionate and enthusiastic about buying records and acquired one of the largest collections around town. The family home was like a community center; Saturday dances were often held in the large living room. The family radio was one of the few on the block. The house was on a corner with an alley on the side that provided enough space for a private arena for Joe Louis fights. The neighbors would bring their own milk crates and line them up in the alley. When Joe Louis won a round or made a significant punch, the neighborhood’s little Madison Square Garden would break out in wild cheering for the Brown Bomber.

The United States entered World War II in 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7. Although Curtis celebrated his eighteenth birthday on that same day, he was not drafted for the service because of his heart condition. Curtis married in 1942 after high school. When Lawrence turned seventeen in June, he listed his age as eighteen and joined the armed services; all the young boys were joining the service as soon as they became eighteen. Lawrence was stationed in Italy. By December 1947, after the war ended, Lawrence, Bernice, and Gloria had all married and lived within the DC area.

In 1944, Bellinger and her three daughters left Glendale Baptist Church and joined Mount Carmel Baptist Church. Bellinger loved her Sunday school Bible class dearly, rarely missing a Sunday. Curtis and Lawrence joined other churches, but our father remained at Glendale Baptist.

Bellinger taught Bernice to sew, using her feet to pedal the sewing machine. Bernice had a sewing class at Browne Junior High and became a better seamstress. Our mother taught us how to sew buttons on with needle and thread. I learned how to dust the furniture and iron some of my clothes and hair ribbons. I was free to play most of the time. I played kickball, dodgeball, and football, climbed trees, jumped rope, jumped fences, and tore my dresses. I wore out more shoes than my family had ration coupons to buy. I could roller skate on the sidewalk across the street very fast, and I could run like the wind. I was a tomboy.

During the summer, we went to the Langston Library to read and check out books to read at home. The center near the library taught us how to make pot holders, tile hot plates, and other handcrafts.

The post-Depression years were not as harsh for my family as for many other families; Frederick always had a job, although the companies limited the number of working days. Frederick also worked as a barber, cutting hair on Saturdays. He was very adept in cutting the hair of small children.

Frederick never wanted his wife to work outside of the home, and Bellinger was content to spend her days caring for her home and family. Bellinger spent her Saturdays cooking dinner for Sunday. Her menus included such delectable items as greens simmering in ham hocks, fried chicken, finger-lickin’ good, macaroni and cheese with buttered bread crumbs on top, and yeast rolls that no one can duplicate. Bellinger baked pineapple upside-down cake on top of the stove in her large black skillet. She made many different kinds of pies—coconut and lemon custard, peach and apple cobbler, and, best of all, her renowned sweet potato pie. At the end of summer, the girls helped Bellinger can fruits, vegetables, and jellies for the winter season.

Church and Sunday school were a very big part of the family’s heritage. In the early years, Glendale Baptist Church was the family’s place of worship, and all the children were baptized there when they reached the age of twelve. Frederick was a trustee and sang in the choir.

My father, Frederick, worked most of his life as a skilled laborer doing cement work in Washington, DC. Because of failing health (heart problems, high blood pressure, asthma, and arthritis), he worked the last eleven years of his life with the railroad, in the mail section. Frederick always worked part time as a barber at our neighborhood barber shop.

When I began my second year at Dunbar High in 1948, my brother Lawrence and his wife, Audrey, bought a house on Montello Avenue NE. Lawrence asked our mother and father and me to come live with them.

I was very happy to move away from the old neighborhood and the big old frame house that we lived in for more than sixteen years. We had a lot of fun, but it was time to move