Family Album 7

Copyright 2009-All Rights Reserved

Claire Marguerite Lovejoy Lennon (Sept. 24, 1902 – Aug. 18, 1992)

Aunt Claire and Uncle Matt couldn’t have children, but she was the kind of woman that kids and teenagers automatically fell in love with. A listener who always had time for you. Someone who explained things. Soft-spoken. Empathetic. Understanding. She was the kind you wished, when you were a teenager, that you could have as a mother when you’d messed up with your own for the third time and knew you were going down for it. In a time when folks were making Ma Bell rich with their long distance calling, Aunt Claire was an old-fashioned letter-writer. And a very good one. In another time—a later era, she might have tried her hand at writing as a profession. She used to write me very long letters when I was in high school and college. They got shorter as I got older, but letter writing was something she did all her life.

Aunt Claire was born in Warm Springs, Georgia. Her obituary says that she was one of four children and that her parents began their children’s education at home. Apparently they did so well that when Aunt Claire entered school at 6 ½, she was placed in the third grade. She started teaching when she was seventeen.

Like everybody else who taught school then, she was a product of “the normal school” which was set up specifically for public teacher education. After finishing it, you could teach right away. This kind of school is not to be confused with the colleges that existed in the late nineteen and early twentieth century for the upper classes (code words for rich White people); those colleges, by the way, looked down on normal schools as “poor relations”, so to speak, that educated teachers for the “common” or public schools which were for the “unrich” masses. Later Aunt Claire went on to college—Georgia State, Tuskeegee, and Atlanta University—because we all know Black folks have to do double or triple the amount White folks do, just to qualify.

By the time I was born, she was Superintendent at Allen High, a private school for girls. Later, she worked as an administrator at Palmer School, and later, still, she worked with the YWCA. Eventually, she went to Spelman College with Uncle Matt and served for a time as First Lady of the College since the President, at the time, had no wife to fill that role for the college.

I once saw a picture of Aunt Claire as a young girl and I have to say I didn’t recognize her at all. She looked like a White girl—a gorgeous White girl. That means, of course, that she could’ve passed if she’d wanted to. Obviously, she—like a whole lot of others who could’ve passed—didn’t want to. She told me about the time after Uncle Matt had died when she shared a cab with some White women also living at the same large retirement complex as she. They were all going to a concert in Asheville. Some of the women in the cab knew each other, but none of them knew her. On the way, a couple of them began talking about Black folks, making observations that were, to say the least, unflattering—and demeaning. Thinking they were all “one of a kind”, the silver-haired duennas pulled out all the stops, holding nothing back in their conversation, showing—in a manner of speaking—their true colors. Then, one of the old ladies turned and asked Aunt Claire what she thought. Aunt Claire opined that since she was Black, she thought…. Well, you can see where that went. They turned red and clamed up, mumbling some inane excuses and half-hearted apologies. She smiled to herself and proceeded to have herself a good ole time at the concert.

I tell you this story to show you that ladies of her day either decided to pass as White or they declared for Black. No half-stepping code words like “Biracial” to set themselves apart and tell the world they were light-skinned folks who could pass if they had the nerve to do it. No, sir. They didn’t live in the world of gray, being neither this, nor that. They were Colored folks—and damned proud of it.

Family Album 6

Copyright 2009-All Rights Reserved

Madison C. Benjamin Lennon (March 26, 1909 – Spring, 1976)

Uncle Matt held a distinctly romantic aura for me and I fell completely under his spell. I had heard from bits and pieces of grown-up conversation that he had been a road musician, that he had traveled “all over” as a member of a jazz band. I wonder now how a p.k.—preacher’s kid got away with that. It wasn’t a respectable occupation for Black folks in the 1920’s, 30’s, or 40’s.

Uncle Matt was born in Savannah, Georgia and grew up there as well as in Daytona Beach, Florida where he attended Bethune-Cookman High School which was later named Bethune-Cookman College (one of the historic Black colleges). His junior college years were at Morristown Junior College in Tennessee. Then came his discovery of his feel for music during the years at Wilberforce. He said that his major was Political Science and had planned to go into Law, but he got deeply involved with a band on campus and a love affair with the music muse was born. Uncle Matt told me that from 1930 to 1932, he was on the road with various jazz bands—the Chocolate Drops, for one, and Zack White’s Beau Brummels, for another. Later, I found out he was on the road for about three years immediately following his graduation from Ohio’s Wilberforce University. Marriage to Aunt Claire in 1933 soon put an end to musician’s road life.

He got his Master’s in music at Ohio State University and did further work at Columbia, U. of Wisconsin, U. of North Carolina. So he was well-rounded, variously experienced and definitely qualified to step into the classroom. His teaching life started in LaGrange, Georgia and eventually took him to Asheville, North Carolina in 1941. It was there that as Director of Bands, his bands at segregated Stephens-Lee High consistently made their mark as the state’s best marching-concert bands, often walking off with first place honors in competitions.

Asheville was a 3-hour drive from Knoxville over the Smokey Mountains so going over there was a treat that we did only so often. When we did go to visit Uncle Matt and Aunt Claire, my favorite aunt and uncle, I could see how the students loved him. They called him “Doc” Lennon there. He got a lot of respect, as did his band. Though I only got to watch his band a few times, a blind person could see that they were A-Number One; they could even beat Austin’s band with their unique marching style—which was a definite crowd pleaser. I remember that the drum line set a wicked beat and the drum major and majorettes behind him gave us a performance that had you clapping and hollering. I heard people often compare his band to the revered Florida A & M State (another historic Black college) that routinely turned out the very best in college marching bands—White or Black. After integration closed the doors of Stephens-Lee, Uncle Matt went to Atlanta to teach at Spellman College (yet another historic Black college) as Director of Instrumental Music from 1966 until he retired in 1973. After he retired, he organized and directed a rhythm band with Asheville Senior Citizens until he died. I think it was Asheville High School that established a music scholarship in his memory for deserving young musicians planning to go to college.

Uncle Madison was my music man. My Jazzy Boo. He was so cool. I do miss him.

Family Album 5

Copyright 2009-All rights Reserved

Avice Evans Lennon (December 4, 1905 – September 30, 1998)

Aunt Avice was Uncle Frank’s second wife, and he was her second husband. A year or two after he divorced Aunt Helen, which was around 1960, he and Avice got married. Aunt Avice was a professional woman in her own right—a pharmacist and business woman who owned College Drug Store on the West side of Knoxville, in Mechanicsville, just down the street a piece from Knoxville College, a Black college that dates from 1876. Actually, she was the first Black female pharmacist in Knoxville, having gotten her degree as a registered pharmacist from Xavier University in 1950.

I think Uncle Frank wanted to marry Aunt Avice because she was a I’ll-stand-by-you kind of woman. I don’t believe he was well and was probably looking for someone who’d see him through. Aunt Avice, unlike her predecessor, was an honorable woman who did just that with much compassion and love. After everybody in my family had died, the only relative I had left was Aunt Avice, who was living with her sister, Aunt Teenie (Armentine Pickett, one of my “no-relation aunts” from years back). I loved “The Aunts,” who, in their golden years, were good-looking women with snow white hair and a hearty sense of humor; they also happened to be super-sized, die-hard Laker fans. Once, I had baseball caps made up for them with sequined letters showing each of their names on the backside, and inscribed on the front with the words: “Laker Fan”. They wore the caps while they watched the games, yelling at the players, screaming in joy when one of them made a basket, and generally having such a good time that you’d have they were ringside at all the games.

Aunt Avice was the relative I came out to back in 1990. The others were dead by then. Most people who’ve read my book, The Mee Street Chronicles, want to know what she said once I phoned and told her the truth about my sexuality. In a syrupy southern accent, she said something like: “Why, honey, I don’t care about that.” During the same conversation, I told her I was getting married at my church in Los Angeles to a woman, and she replied in typical Knoxville fashion: “Is she a nice girl? If she is, then that’s all right.” They don’t make ‘em like Aunt Avice anymore. She was one of those Black Knoxville women with true grit. And true heart. She laid down to rest a bit at age 93. I hope she’s restin’ good.

Family Album 4

Copyright 2009-All Rights Reserved

Helen Mae White Lennon ( ? – 1970’s)

Aunt Helen was Uncle Frank’s first wife. She herself said that she was a great beauty when she married my uncle Frank. She dropped that bit of history, along with other tidbits one summer afternoon when she did an uncharacteristic thing by coming from her house next door to our house, sit outside and talk awhile with Daddy while he barbequed. I stayed still as a mouse so as to not miss a word as Aunt Helen recounted her escapades with Uncle Frank before they got married. Seems that there was some hanky-panky going on with Uncle Frank visiting her dorm room (she was a nursing student and he a doctoring student). That blew me away. I just couldn’t picture them together—roly-poly Aunt Helen and staid, passive Uncle Frank. Later on, I saw a photo (not the one posted here) picturing a very young Aunt Helen and she was, indeed, beautiful. The way Aunt Helen told it, she seduced Uncle Frank into marriage. She wasn’t preggers or anything, just made herself so irresistible that Uncle Frank was bound and determined to have her.

Aunt Helen was a drama queen, and an alcoholic. While she was alive, I really, really disliked her. Not because she was an alcoholic—or a drama queen. Really, it was because she always had a sneer about her. As if looking at you down her nose. As if you didn’t measure up. And worse, because you didn’t measure up, you became fair game for her to make fun of. Somebody for her to point at and laugh about. You know the kind that titters behind her hands with the others in her group. For sure, she liked to read you…up close and personal. But she had nerve, I’ll give her that. And she never lost it. Not even when Uncle Frank—tiring of her drinking, the endless parties in her kitchen, and her amorous escapades—finally threw her out. After which, the story goes, she found another man to marry that she thought had some money. Which she didn’t. And he thought she had some money. Well, turned out neither one had a crying dime. When Aunt Helen found out the truth, she divorced him faster than a New York minute. This, of course, was Aunt Helen’s version of what happened as she narrated it to me and Daddy the last time I ever saw her. She ended up living out her days in very modest circumstances, compared to the way she’d lived before. It didn’t humble her. She was a hellcat to the very end.

Family Album 3

Copyright 2009-All Rights Reserved

Edgar Frank Lennon (March 1, 1888 – 1966)

My mother named me after Uncle Frank who, being the family doctor, helped bring me into the world at Knoxville General Hospital. Uncle Frank was the firstborn of the three Lennon brothers, all born in March.

Uncle Frank was born in Bladenboro, North Carolina. He graduated from Morristown College in Morristown, Tennessee and finished Meharry Medical University in 1917 as a trained doctor. That was quite a feat for the times and the place where he lived. People forget that a college education was not generally available to the everyday person back then and for a Black man to find a way to become a doctor was a significant achievement. I say this not to brag but to pinch myself about what I’ve read about the times, the general lack of opportunities, the hard-ass road that Black people struggled to trudge in those times. The same year he graduated, Uncle Frank opened his office at 1011/2 West Vine Ave. in Knoxville.

Uncle Frank was a man who did good things. Remember that Black people could not go to the same hospitals or clinics as Whites and so, unless Black doctors had the resources to do so, Black people went without hospital medical care. In 1922, Uncle Frank bought a building, remodeled it, and opened, on Clinch Street, The Helen M. Lennon Hospital and nurse training school with twenty-five beds. I’m sure there’s a story in that. Unfortunately, I don’t know it. I have to wonder: Where did he get the money? How did he manage to buy property in Knoxville? White people would not, did not, sell property to Blacks back then. Which means a White man must have bought it for him on the Q.T. (quiet time). Who was he and what was their relationship? Why did he do that for Uncle Frank? After all, it would have been a risk for him to do that for a Black man. His community would have branded him a “nigger-lover” and made his life hell. Anyway.

When Knoxville General Hospital was built, Jim Crow was making the rules in the South about what Blacks could and could not do. One of the rules was that Black doctors were not permitted to treat and operate on their own patients who were admitted there, so Uncle Frank and other Black doctors led the legal fight that ultimately gave Black doctors the right to practice and operate in KGH’s Negro Unit. Finding that out about him shocked me because his demeanor was not that of a boat-rocker or freedom-fighter. He seemed to be a mild-mannered, quiet man. More of a traditionalist. You just never know about your relatives. When you’re a kid, you come up with these half-baked assumptions based on appearances, your feelings, on a bunch of who knows what.

Of the two sisters-in-law, Mama seemed to be his favorite. They appeared to be good friends—at least, she seemed to be his confidante. I remember many Sundays that, after he divorced Aunt Helen, he came to dinner at our house, and he and Mama would have long conversations while I was in the kitchen doing the dishes. Personally, I found Uncle Frank hard to know. Very reserved. Unlike Daddy or Uncle Matt, he didn’t seem approachable though he couldn’t have been more thoughtful of me… always giving me elaborate presents. But I never could really feel him. Even now, as I look at his picture, my impression is of a carefully shielded man. Or a man shut-down and unemotional. In the picture, Uncle Frank is expressionless. And that’s the way I remember his face. Never animated; just sort of flat, or impassive. And always unreadable. He looks perfectly respectable in the picture—middle-aged, wearing rimless spectacles, a white shirt with thin dark lines, a dark tie, and dark pin-striped suit. His skin is lighter than that of his two brothers…more like his mother’s, and he has her lips. It’s his eyes that are arresting. He’s looking away from the camera, seeing something in the distance, and his eyes tell you about sadness and loneliness. Did Aunt Helen’s partying do that? Or their son’s early and untimely death? I wonder.