By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 10, 2019 — I remember the wedding of my cousin Leonardette Ross to Danny King on December 21, 1991, at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral as if it were yesterday.
I flew down to Nassau from Washington, D.C. for the occasion, and recall being asked to propose a toast at the reception. Everyone who has read articles I’ve written about my closely knit family know Leonardette’s late mother, Sylvia Elliott Ross, who was my cousin, was very instrumental in my life’s journey virtually from I was a baby.
Cousin Sylvia was the daughter of my uncle Clarence Elliott, Sr., the eldest son of Ben and Mabel Elliott of Stanyard Creek, Andros, who left Stanyard Creek in the late 1930s or early 1940s to work in Nassau.
Uncle Clarence obviously never forgot the principled values instilled in him by his parents from he was a child and did no squander his money, eventually saving enough to purchase some property through Paul Meeres Corner (now known as Fleming Street), where he built what back then would have been considered a “big” house.
He was a “good-looking” man and no doubt was considered to be a very “good catch” for a husband by the young ladies he presumably pursued. Cousin Sylvia was his daughter from a relationship he had with a beautiful young lady, Mae Davis, who took her to live with Papa and Mama at Stanyard Creek when she was a baby, no doubt partly due to the stigma attached to a young girl having a baby out of wedlock.
The home that Uncle Clarence built through Paul Meeres Corner became the family’s homestead when we relocated from Stanyard Creek, and it is where I grew up during most of my teenage years. It’s still “standing strong” opposite the now-closed “Keith’s Chicken In The Bag” take-out restaurant, which was extremely popular in the 1960s with the “late night crowd” after partying at The Banana Boat or one of the other popular nightclubs in Nassau.
Being the ambitious and industrious young man that he was, Uncle Clarence subsequently moved to New York and settled in Harlem, where he made a comfortable living over the years as a barber. I was reliably informed that Sidney Poitier, then a struggling young actor, was one of his regular customers.
During a visit to New York in February of 1967 for a dinner held at the Americana Hotel to celebrate the Progressive Liberal Party’s historic January 10, 1967 election victory, I found out that Uncle Clarence was the founding President of the Bahamian American Association in New York, which back then had a large membership of Bahamians living in the New York-area diaspora.
The PLP victory dinner was sponsored by Huntington Hartford, heir to the A. & P. food chain fortune, who owned Hog Island (now known as Paradise Island) and at the time a resident of The Bahamas. In fact, Hartford died at his home in Lyford Cay in 2008 at the age of 97.
The Bahamian American Association played major role in helping to organize the dinner and I was invited along with my mentor Arthur A. Foulkes, Editor of Bahamian Times, the PLP’s newspaper, where I worked leading up to the election .Of course, the Bahamian group was led by newly sworn-in Premier Lynden O. Pindling.
Uncle Clarence eventually bought the apartment in Harlem where he lived, and it is still occupied by his daughter, Patricia Elliott Horsford, one of his six children who were born in New York. The others are Clarence Elliott Jr. (deceased), Sandra Elliott Coleman (deceased), Mabel Elliott Moultrie, Alfred Elliott and Norma Elliott.
When Uncle Clarence’s marital situation faltered in the late 1950s, his then young children were sent to live with family members in The Bahamas or Miami. Sandra, Patricia, Clarence Jr., and Mabel all graduated from high schools in Miami, where they lived with aunt Amanda Elliott Fox and her husband Lawrence Fox, who had built a home at 1510 N.W. 69th Terrace in Liberty City, which was then a newly developed upscale Miami subdivision.
The two youngest children, Alfred and Norma, grew up in Nassau with my aunt Maria, who completely renovated the house through Fleming Street when she returned to Nassau after graduating in 1956 from Bennett College in North Carolina and began her life-long teaching career.
Having been exposed to a better lifestyle as a student at Bennett College, one of the first improvements Aunt Maria made to the Fleming Street house was the installation of indoor plumbing in one of the back rooms, which meant that we no longer had to use the outside toilet on the back perimeter of the property.
Aunt Maria also purchased our first television that may have been the first in a home through Fleming Street, given the fact that neighborhood children used to gather on the porch to peer through the windows to watch our television, especially on a Sunday night when the popular “Ed Sullivan” variety show was televised.
Aunt Maria subsequently built a very nice home in Sands Subdivision — off Wulff Road, near to Village Road – and this is where Alfred and Norma, uncle Clarence’s children, grew up from they were children. Norma still calls Aunt Maria “Mommy” and when her health started to deteriorate, Norma moved her to New York to live with her in Brooklyn.
For the past several months, however, Aunt Maria has been in Nassau living with Leonardette and was in Miami for Peetie’s graduation from Saint John Vianney College Seminary on Wednesday, May 8, 2019. I have been informed that she will soon be returning to Brooklyn to live with her “daughter” Norma.
Unfortunately, I was not able to make the trip to Miami for Peetie’s graduation, but he knows how proud I am of his accomplishments. His mother Leonardette and I are extremely close, and over the years I have gotten to know his father Danny very well and tremendously respect and admire his strong work ethic and the comfortable lifestyle he provided for his family at Cat Island, where Leonardette was a teacher for many years.
Both Leonardette and Danny were lucky to have found each other and to have allowed Our Lord and Savior to be in the driver’s seat of their marriage from they made the commitment “to love, honor and obey, till death do us part” on Saturday, December 21, 1991. Surely, Our Lord and Savior has blessed them richly by choosing their offspring, Devereaux E. (Peetie) King, to be one of his disciples as a Priest of the Roman Catholic Church, which has nurtured and sustained the spiritual growth of members of our family throughout the years.
