Aunt Mad

My Aunt Mad (Madeline) the oldest child was the stalwart in the family, being the mother figure after theirs. Died when she was 10 years old. Papa worked 12-14 hours a day and she cooked, cleaned and help raise her 4 siblings.
Not only was she a child doubling as mother, she excelled in school. She later graduated at the top of her class from AC high school. She earned a working scholarship to Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. That meant she had to get there and work in private for room and board and carry a full class load. She arrived in frigid upstate NY without a winter coat and only10 dollars she and Papa had scraped together. She told me that she lived on apples for a month until she got a job as a live-in housekeeper and cook for a wealthy family
She majored in biology and between working and excelling in school was one of the first Delta Sigma Thetas in the US, and was able to graduate cum laude in 4 years.
Her first job offer was teaching biology at North Carolina A&T Univ. in Greensboro, NC where she remained one year. Her best friend there was Anna who later married the famous scientist Percy Julian. She and Anna later moved to Washington, D.C and Baltimore respectively. Aunt Mad secured a job teaching biology at Dunbar High School in DC eventually becoming the department head after getting her masters at Univ. of Pennsylvania. Many of her students rose to prominence, one was Edward Brook of Massachusetts, who became the first Black US senator since reconstruction.
Every year my aunt would spend the summer with us in AC and on weekends our apartment would overflow with guests who came down to the south Jersey shore for surf and sun.
The apartment was filled with the smell of cooking, baking and laughter and story telling as friends flowed in and out from the beach and night life. My cousins and I were right in the midst of this weekly affair, soaking it all up.
In later years Aunt Mad went on cruises, satisfying her yearning to explore the world. She continued to travel well into her 90’s
Aunt Mad was about 5’ 4” and petit. One of my most memorable recollections was an event that happened to her during the depression. At the time teachers were being paid in script and money changer would exchange script for cash on the street corners around DC. She had just gotten her monthly script converted to cash and was walking away when a man snatched her purse with all her money, basically every thing she had and took off down an alley she in hot pursuit, grabbing him and wrestling her purse away, he being twice her size said “lady are you crazy” and she said “yes”. I asked her if she was afraid and she said I was afraid of having nothing to my name. Aunt Mad never married and was like a second mother to me. I believe that the early responsibilities imposed on her early in life made her wary of raising a family. But she loved all her niece and nephews dearly as we did her. For some reason, I was special and she nicknamed me Earley Burley. and my cousins made up a rhyme “Earley Burley puddnin pie kissed the girls and made them cry, when the girls came out to play Earley Burley ran away”