chapter 5 Core Family
Page 64 →My father, Walter Thomas Bowers, was a self-reliant and resourceful person. He was a natural-born salesman who charmed everyone he met. He had an extraordinary network of friend he cultivated in his professional travels across several Southern states. Often called “WT” or “Dub,” he garnered the respect of many through his tireless energy, kindness, and thoughtfulness.
In 1942, my father began his professional career as a life insurance agent at the Black-owned Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company. The Pilgrim was founded in Augusta, Georgia in 1898—the first insurance provider for African Americans in Georgia. He sold industrial life and ordinary life policies. An industrial life policy usually had a face value of less than $1,000 and was basically burial insurance sold to lower income people. It had a fixed premium of a few cents a week that was collected door-to-door by an insurance agent on his debit. Ordinary life policies had a higher face value of up to $5,000 and were sold to people in higher income brackets.1
He worked at the Pilgrim office in Columbia, South Carolina, where he quickly advanced to staff manager. That office was headed by Reverend James M. Hinton, a charismatic business leader. He headed the South Carolina NAACP State Conference from 1941 through 1958, during which time he grew and energized the state organization to become the most effective civil rights advocacy group in the South. He fought many legal and political battles against the racist white power structure across South Carolina. In 1947, Reverend Hinton successfully fought battles to gain equal salaries for Page 65 →Black teachers and secure the right for Black citizens to vote in the all-white Democratic Party primary. His crowning accomplishment was inspiring Reverend J. A. Delaine and Clarendon County Black residents to sue for equal educational opportunities, which led to the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education. Reverend Hinton exhibited supreme courage while pursuing his many civil rights activities, putting his safety in jeopardy many times; on one occasion he narrowly escaped being lynched by a white mob.2
My father shared the humanistic ideals of Reverend Hinton and always spoke fondly and respectfully of him while I was growing up. Taking a page from the reverend’s playbook, I recall my father speaking at a civil rights rally at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, on Green Street in Orangeburg, on the importance of community organizing and voting. He was very active in the Orangeburg County and South Carolina Democratic Party and was captain of his voting precinct in Orangeburg’s Ward 4. In addition, he was a lifelong member of Trinity United Methodist Church, a member of the South Carolina Insurance Association, a Mason, and a member of the Boy Scouts Council.
During his career, he worked at other Black-owned insurance companies. He was district manager of the Decatur, Alabama office of the Protective Industrial Insurance company. In addition, he was chief auditor of another insurance company, which required him to travel to several Southern states to examine the financial books of the company’s district offices. One summer, he took me on the road with him to insurance districts located in Gadsden, Montgomery, and Tuskegee, Alabama. That experience gave me a rare glimpse into his life. He had a commanding presence among his vast network of friends. He was very good-looking and everyone wanted to be associated with him.
In 1965, during the twilight of his insurance career, he returned to the Pilgrim as assistant vice president and chief field auditor. I am Page 66 →proud to have helped him organize his resume for that position. My father was ecstatic that Reverend Hinton was still employed by the company, later becoming chairman of its board of directors.
My father was revered during his later years at the Pilgrim. At his retirement party on April 12, 1985, the auditorium was filled to capacity with his many friends and colleagues. My brother, Wally, and I were privileged to have been invited to share remarks at that event about what our father meant to us.
Although my father was a very intelligent man, he never realized his full potential. He was forced to step up to family responsibilities because his father died when he was only eight years old. As the oldest sibling, he withdrew from Claflin University after his second year to help his mother support the family. He financed the college education of his younger brother and two sisters at Claflin. Because family responsibilities were thrust upon him at an early age, he was deprived of the normal youthful experiences that are so necessary to becoming a mature adult. Happily, after he discharged his responsibility to his family, he was able to pursue his own goals and study business administration at the University of Pennsylvania.
The end of his life was tragic. He was admitted to a nursing home after he had a second stroke; he could not take care of himself at home, and it was too expensive to have a full-time caretaker. Anticipating this type of illness years earlier, I tried to secure a long-term care insurance policy that would have provided the means to care for him at home. However, his application for insurance was rejected because a month before submitting the application, he received radiation treatment for prostate cancer.
When we put him in a nursing home, he was the most unhappy person you could imagine. He had always had an active life with many friends and that had abruptly ended. This was gut-wrenching for the family and on my last visit with him, he would not acknowledge my presence. A few months later, he passed away. I was not surprised at his death. As someone who always enjoyed his freedom and Page 67 →independence, in the nursing home he felt he had nothing to live for. I have learned a lesson from that experience about being forced to leave your home for an assisted living facility. I don’t want to have the same fate as my father.
My mother (seated far left) and her classmates in Miss El Dorado Johnson’s dressmaking class at St. Martin’s Episcopal Center in Harlem. Author’s collection.
My mother, Anne Brown Bowers, was educated at South Carolina State Agricultural and Mechanical College; she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree on May 30, 1933. In State College High School, she was popular in her class, holding the class office of Assistant Secretary. She was a very attractive, fair-skinned woman who loved to attend church in her smart hats and white gloves. Possessed of many talents, she was a first-class seamstress, who sewed for many middle-class Black women in Orangeburg. While in college, she received instructions in dressmaking from Miss El Dorado Johnson at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church Center in Harlem, New York City.3 It must have been exciting for her to be in the city during the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural renewal and revitalization of fashion equal to the revival of art and literature. Fashion Page 68 →was used to convey elegance and flamboyancy, which can be seen in the clothes designed and sewn by my mother. The Paris couture of Josephine Baker was widely copied during the Harlem Renaissance.
My mother was a teacher to me and many others. Author’s collection.
After graduating from college and completing advanced education courses at Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, my mother got her first job as a high school teacher in Statesboro, Georgia in 1934. After six years in Statesboro, she returned to Orangeburg and taught elementary and high school in the Great Branch, Bowman, and Branchville, South Carolina, education districts. In her last teaching position at Branchville, she taught English to 9th through 12th graders. She retired from teaching in 1975. She always saw the good in people. As the proud daughter of a college professor, she always set high standards for herself and her children.
Since my father travelled constantly for work obligations, my mother was the glue that held the family together. She made sure Page 69 →my brothers and I were well-groomed, had proper manners, went to church, and developed good study and work habits. After supper, we all studied at the kitchen table, while my mother prepared her lesson plan for the next day. It was important to her that we had a grounding in the arts and were exposed to music. All of us took piano lessons. In addition, one brother, Wally, learned the saxophone and another, Roy, studied dance.
Mt. Zion United Methodist Church was everything to my mother. She carried on the tradition of her family in providing leadership to the church. She worked with the minister in planning Sunday services. I recall the weekly visits by the minister to our house to discuss church matters with my mother. She led the music ministry, directing the choir while playing the piano. She was President of the United Methodist Women, taught Sunday School, served as financial secretary, and was on the administrative board. In addition, she was community-oriented; participated in voter registration activities; and held voluntary positions with the Heart Fund, Kidney Foundation, March of Dimes, Jolly Acres Retirement Home, and the Elks organization. A few weeks before her death, she excoriated certain members of the congregation to step up to the leadership roles she performed. I think she had a foreboding that the end was near.
At her funeral at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, a close family friend described her as a “saint.” Hundreds of community members attended her funeral to express their affection and respect; half of them could not even get into the church. To commemorate her long and effective service, the church displayed her portrait in the Fellowship Hall after her death. It was the only portrait displayed at the church.
I was close to my brothers, Wally and Roy, and had a different relationship with each. Wally is only nineteen months older than me and was one academic year ahead of me, and so we did most things together. As the older brother, Wally dictated the pathway most of the time and I followed. He was handsome and articulate and was Page 70 →well-liked by all. He seemed to succeed at everything he attempted. He always excelled academically. It took me a while to hit my academic stride. Wally was a good athlete. We played sandlot basketball, baseball, and football together. He was an outstanding saxophone player who consistently achieved a position on the South Carolina all-state band. He sang the lead part in the Wilkinson High School performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Mikado. My musical talents were meager, although I showed promise on the piano as a child. When Wally ran for president of the Wilkinson High student council, I ran for vice president the same year. We both won and our fellow students jokingly referred to us as the “bowels movement” (a take on the pronunciation of our last name Bowers). It would then seem natural that, when he went to college at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, I would leave high school early to matriculate at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. We have a close bond to this day.
My brothers, Roy and Wally, along with me, our parents, and my niece, Jamelle. Author’s collection.
Meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu (first row, center) and me (directly behind), 1990. Author’s collection.
Wally is an influential obstetrics and gynecology physician in the Cincinnati community. After service in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War, he attended medical school at the University of Michigan. In Cincinnati in September 1986, he successfully delivered the first “test-tube” baby, through a procedure where eggs are removed from a woman’s ovaries, placed in a laboratory container, fertilized with a male’s sperm, and then implanted in the woman’s uterus. Scientists refer to the process as in vitro fertilization.
Wally has been a visible civic leader in Cincinnati. He was affiliated with Cincinnati Reaches Out, a community organization that collected and delivered medicine and medical equipment to Ethiopia and Somalia. He traveled to Ethiopia on one of the delivery trips on a flight sponsored by Delta and Lufthansa airlines. The organization invited Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate, to view the volunteer activities of the program at the Cincinnati food Page 72 →bank. He accepted the invitation through the Episcopal Dioceses. During this visit, Wally hosted a reception to introduce Archbishop Tutu to leaders of the Cincinnati community. Wally arranged for me to meet with Bishop Tutu, and we had a productive conversation on world hunger. That was in May 1990, around the time Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
My relationship with Roy was totally different. He was almost four years younger and idolized me. Roy was closer to me than he was to Wally. That probably happened because we were closer in age, and I reached out to him more than Wally did. Because of the age difference, Roy had a different group of friends and had different interests. He was always interested in singing and dance.
Roy wanted to tag along with me whenever he got a chance. When Uncle Sam Summers took me opossum hunting, Roy tagged along. Roy would follow Wally and me on adventure hikes, managing once to fall into a steam because he didn’t have the dexterity to get across on a log. When Wally and I had a stick-throwing duel from a distance, Roy managed to get hit by straying too close. I remember that well because my mother had to rush him to Orangeburg Regional Hospital to get several stitches on his forehead.
Roy started college at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, but withdrew after his first year. He later transferred to the University of South Carolina, where he graduated. After college, Roy (he began calling himself Drew by then) pursued a career in the arts, primarily singing and theatre.
Over the years, Drew has created a positive structure around his life. He is naturally gregarious and always made friends in the many places he has lived, whether in Charleston, the US Virgin Islands, or Cincinnati. He has a beautiful baritone voice and continues to perfect his voice with a variety of musical forms, from opera, to choral, to pop songs. He is indeed a pleasure to be around.