Abstract
Shelley Stokes-Hammond is the oldest daughter of Louis Stokes. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Goucher College. She is a historic preservationist, author and public relations manager at Howard University. This 2017 interview was collected as part of a yearlong, community-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Carl Stokes' election as mayor of Cleveland.
Loading...
Interviewee
Stokes-Hammond, Shelley (interviewee)
Interviewer
Donato, Mike (interviewer)
Project
Stokes: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future
Date
9-15-2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
43 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Shelley Stokes-Hammond interview, 15 September 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 501035.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1187
Transcript
Mike Donato [00:00:04] Okay, Shelley, let's just have a conversation.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:00:06] Okay.
Mike Donato [00:00:07] Let's start off by talking about a little bit about your Uncle Carl? Tell me about your memories of your Uncle Carl.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:01:50] You know, my memories of my uncle- I think my earliest memory of my Uncle Carl was in 1958, and that's when we went to also live with my grandmother. And I was 7 years old, and it was in August. So he- He would come by to visit his mom and see all of us. And we have this picture of us. We look pretty awful by this old Buick. I guess it must have been Dad's car. So that was my earliest memory. And then over the years, we spent a lot of. He always came by to see grandma, and he often came by at the end of a work day in his shirt and tie. I noticed that as a child. And Grandma would put a plate out for him if dad was already eating. He was the baby brother who would sometimes go over and kind of mess with his big brother. And grandma might have to say, okay, stop it, boys. You know, and other than that, there were the holiday meals that my grandmother would make really nice. And then growing up onto his campaigns for state representative, for mayor. And then he was there for my wedding. He was really excited about that. And he was very excited when I gave birth to each of my first two children. And the third child as well, the last one was born when he got sick. And so those are the kinds of memories that I have of him.
Mike Donato [00:01:56] You mentioned being a part of some of his early campaigns. What was that like as a young person? And did you understand what was happening and the role that you and your cousins played in something like that?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:02:10] I don't think I fully understood everything going on. I was just really proud of my uncle because I knew he was doing something important, something that we could be proud of, and we could feel that from the world outside, from my teachers, my classmates, some of my classmates, parents. So that was, I think, in high school at Shaker High, I remember in a government class. And I was really nervous about doing very well because Uncle Carl was running for mayor. And so the teacher, when he hands my test back to me, he says, shelly Stokes, you did great. It was a B plus. It wasn't an A, but I was so relieved that I had not done poorly because of the connection to the family. He one day he came by our house and he told my grandmother, I guess that she said, carl wants you to go with him to do some campaigning over to the west side. And I didn't know much I knew we lived on the east side. I knew that this west side was something that was all white. But I still didn't have a real sense of race. Because where we grew up, in the Ludlow community of Shaker Heights, people had decided, let's make this work. Black, white, Christian, Jew. But he came by and we rode in the car together. I was a little shy, a little nervous at that point. And then we walked into this community. Looking back, I realized it was all white. And I saw him speak, and he said, what did you think about that? You know? So that was something I really cherish. And then later on, when we moved to Silver Spring, I was raising my children. I stopped in the Silver Spring library to help them. There was a librarian who had grown up in Cleveland on the west side. Her father was a Hungarian writer. They had, you know, left Hungary during the October Red Scare. And he never had to learn English because they lived in the Hungarian section on the west side of Cleveland. Well, it turned out he had written articles about my uncle campaigning on the west side. And she and I are now, you know, really good friends.
Mike Donato [00:04:39] It's a small world.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:04:40] It's a small world. It was nice.
Mike Donato [00:04:43] Was there a point when you- Do you remember when you may have been exposed to the racism that did exist during that time? Or was it something that maybe to you?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:04:57] Something- As far as my first exposure to racism, I did not realize I was in a school- When we were living on East 149th Street with my grandmother, we attended Moses Cleaveland Elementary, A. J. Rickoff. I didn't know until later that it was pretty much all Black. I didn't realize on East 149th Street it was pretty much Black. I was just a kid growing up, feeling pretty happy. Then we moved to the Ludlow neighborhood, and I didn't really pay much attention to race there either. They had a pond that all the kids would ice skate, and they'd pour some water into this little sunken area. And the kids were as diverse as the colors of their coats and scarves and hats and gloves. And you just thought about being a child. And many of my classmates say the same thing. Classmates of all races. But when we got to high school, something changed. Nobody had said anything. It was something about, I guess, puberty dating and the world around us. And so no longer were we having the pajama parties that were mixed races. We were sitting. Black kids were sitting in the all Black table in the cafeteria. It was a very strange experience. And I did have a. A guidance counselor who tried to act as though I must have studied awfully hard to get the good grades I got at Woodbury Junior High School. Those would. I'd say those are my first sense of race. But I don't think I really understood until I graduated from college and started in the work world. Yeah.
Mike Donato [00:06:41] Let's talk a little bit more about your Uncle Carl. I mean, when he was elected mayor, obviously that was something that was historical for the world and the city, but what are your memories of that night? There's something that? When you was a? Did you realize it was something special? Tell me about that.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:07:00] Well, my father was always trying to include us in as much as he could. And so that night he rounded us up and took us.
Mike Donato [00:07:12] Hang on one second. Sorry. You good? Okay, just 'cause that little noise. Okay, I'm gonna ask you just one more time. Okay?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:07:23] Yeah. I was set up for the first one. Didn't realize this was the second one on the list. We're good.
Mike Donato [00:07:30] We're good. We're good. Okay. Let's talk about the night that your memories of when your uncle was left to mayor?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:07:36] I do have memories of the night my Uncle Carl was elected mayor. My father was a very good teacher, and he also tried to include us in as much of his career and his. And what was going on with civil rights as possible. So he rounded us all up that night and took us downtown so that we could see what was going on. And, you know, we didn't stay, but at one point, I saw my uncle walking down the street with Dr. Kenny Clements. And. And I started shouting out, uncle Carl, Uncle Carl. Because I was so excited and happy for him. And this was the big night. And he didn't hear us. He was really engaged in this conversation with Dr. Clements. And my father said, brother, brother. And so, you know, he knew that was his brother calling him. And he turned around, he said, the kids wanted to say hi to you. And so he said, hey, you know, baby. And he greeted us all, gave us hugs and kisses. And so that was very nice. That's what I remember now.
Mike Donato [00:08:46] During the time when he was mayor, I mean, the city went through a lot. He worked hard to make a difference. What was it like for you and your cousins, the family during that time when he was such a prominent figure in the community and even in the world at that time?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:09:04] I think we had tremendous pride. We just felt so good about. Even though I didn't understand everything about politics, we just knew he had achieved something very special. And he was the mayor of the city of Cleveland. And we all loved Cleveland. We had grown up loving Cleveland because our father and our uncle loved Cleveland. It was just something we felt about this town anyway, even before he got in politics, we just had this sense of the way children grow up loving America. We. We kind of grew up loving Cleveland. We were close. My uncle's children, his oldest son, Carl Jr. And his daughter Cordy were born at that time. And I was a little bit older than Carl, so I often babysat. My Aunt Shirley gave me piano lessons, and we could walk from our house in Ludlow on Albion Road to their house on East 147th Street. And then it wasn't difficult to walk to his home on Larchmere either. By then, I was in college, during his second term. There was a day when we received a phone call one Sunday that Uncle Carl had been shot. Yeah. And we were all so upset. And then dad was the one who stayed strong, stayed cool. Got to the bottom of the information and found that it wasn't true that Carl was okay. It was, I think, especially difficult for my cousins, Carl Jr. And Cordy, because he was the first, he basically did what Obama did on a larger scale and much earlier, but it was huge. You know, people all over the world took notice of this person who was descended from slaves who, you know, became mayor. People just didn't. Hadn't really thought about that happening before.
Mike Donato [00:11:10] Tell me about him as a person. You talked a little bit about, you know, the family dinners, but, you know, looking at him, tell me what was special about him, Carl, as a person.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:11:22] You know, when we were little, we used to hear that Carl was born with a veil over his face. Have you ever heard that before? Well, he was born with a veil. And I used to ask my dad and other relatives who might mention it, and apparently it's some sort of covering of tissue or something of newborns occasionally. And years ago, people thought that meant that person was going to be very special or they were going to have a certain amount of vision. And so I think he fulfilled that prophecy, so to speak. He called me Shelley Girl. And he always made me feel like there was something about me that was really special. And when somebody does that to you, well, you feel they're really special. He made a special point of celebrating to me directly, you know, about being in college, because I was the first girl, our family, to go to college, and that was a big deal to them. I loved the fact that they loved people for who they were. They loved people, period. They didn't care about race, but they understood what had happened to Black people in the course of history, and they had the courage to give Black people opportunities they hadn't had before in City Hall. Uncle Carl was not afraid to make a Black person treasurer or, you know, different positions like that. At the same time, he also just thought about people, and that's how he got elected. Not thinking about race, but still trying to make up for what had gone wrong in history and to move us a step forward.
Mike Donato [00:13:16] That's a great answer. You know, so we're celebrating. It's the 50th anniversary of his election. Looking from your perspective, Shelley, what is his legacy? You know, what has he left us with because of his work and being the person that he was?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:13:39] I think his greatest legacy is to show what you can do, that dreams are possible and you should never, ever give up dreaming. And I think he also showed that though we may achieve great things, we're still human, we're still vulnerable. And it doesn't mean that everything goes beautifully. He had lots of challenges. His son Carl Jr. was telling me just a couple of weeks ago how he would feel when he would, you know, be sitting at breakfast, open up the newspaper and see something that was not true. And he would get all upset. You know, they're lying. You know, he could speak so well. But when he said, they're lying in a very nice, polished way. And I also saw where he got very upset when some Blacks in middle class, Blacks were upset when he tried to open doors for poor blacks to live in better housing. And it really angered him because he was like those poor blacks. So on one hand, people looked at him as someone who had arrived and was from a different group. But he never forgot where he came from. That always, everything was. The truth was real and dreams were real. I think he left that legacy.
Mike Donato [00:15:10] Your father and uncle worked together. They were a real team in every sense of the word. Tell me about their relationship.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:15:20] They were each other's best friend. And like any other siblings, they had their moments, but they were minor. But don't let somebody else talk about one of them to the. You know, about them, because they're going to stand up for them and they're going to react to that strongly. But they also were big brother and little brother, and that's what we got to see in the family. And I guess the city did, too, when I think about it. I guess one of my favorite memories is they were at a barbecue. I can't remember what the event was. It was Arthur woods foundation, and they were up on her balcony. And the two of them had the best time telling joke after joke after joke. And the rest of us were down on the concrete driveway looking up at them as they spoke. It was just wonderful. I just wish somebody could have captured that. When I was doing research about our family history and I was looking at the Outhwaite project community they lived in, I said, hey, Dad, I just saw where they had a rec center. Did you? Because I'd always heard all these things about the projects, like they were so terrible. He said. I said, did you do that? He said, no, but Carl did. I was working. And then I said, but they had a swimming pool there. Did you swim? He looked at me, he said, no, Carl did. I was working. So I think that's an example of the big brother, little brother. And in Dad's book, he talks about how he wanted a bike. And his grandmother, Fanny Stone, found a way of helping. I mean, dad wrestled with even asking my grandmother for the money, because he knew, but he wanted it to help earn money for the family. But there's a lovely picture of my uncle. It's on file at the Cleveland Public Library, where he's on a bike. And I imagine that's the bike. He probably got to use it more for fun, and dad was using it for work. But they both worked hard, and they looked out for their mother. I think that was. You know, they were. They were so proud of each other.
Mike Donato [00:17:43] Another aspect to the relationship. And you tell me if you have a recollection of this? The story was when the opening for Congress happened and Carl wanted your dad to run. And the story is your dad wasn't- He didn't necessarily want to do that. Do you have any recollection of that? And did your dad ever tell you about this and how that, you know, how he had to be talked into this?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:18:10] Yeah, he spoke about it often. And when he told the story, he was always trying to recognize Uncle Carl's vision for realizing that, you know, this could be done. And Uncle Carl coming to him to lead the legal work in order to open up the opportunity with redistricting. So he always told the story to give credit to others. That's how dad was. And he always wanted Uncle Carl to get credit for what he did. But. And we knew that Dad loved law, that we just knew that from growing up. And he would say, you know, I don't really. You know, politics isn't really for me. But I do remember the night that he came home and said, well, I guess I'm going to run for Congress. And it was just sort of a, excuse me, a quiet thing. But I remember the night he came on and told us that.
Mike Donato [00:19:14] How did your life change when he was elected and became a congressman? Was there a definite feeling of change there?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:19:24] Well, because of the way Dad was the kind of guy about integrity and hard work and achievement. I always felt a responsibility to try to live up to some of that the best that I could. And it made a difference because people did look at me differently, and I felt that, and I was very proud. But I also wanted very hard to try to measure up to that. But I also appreciated the world we lived in because the Metzenbaum girls were at my high school. I had seen him working with Judge Jack Day in his case for Terry versus Ohio. I had gone to his office, just popped by one day downtown and saw Jack Day and dad their heads together trying to figure this out. And then Jack Day had come by our house one day, and there his daughter Kathy was a classmate. And then a lot of my friends in the Ludlow neighborhood, both Black and white, we'd all get on the rapid transit and work at the board of elections. We go down to different Stokes headquarters for my uncle and my dad, and we'd make phone calls. We'd go into poor sections of the black community and knock door to door. And sometimes I do remember this one African American gentleman, elderly, who knew them. And he was so proud that my father's daughter was actually out there stomping around. I was never afraid of being in poor sections because of the way they raised us. They never looked at where they had come from as something bad, something less than they had their friends. And my grandmother's friends, she had lifelong friends from there.
Mike Donato [00:21:29] Let's talk about your dad as a person? Like I asked you about Carl. So what made your dad special as a person? Tell me about that?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:21:38] I think love. And-
Mike Donato [00:21:42] Can you start by saying, What made my dad- Maybe start by saying.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:21:44] Okay, all right, sure. Thank you. [crosstalk] What made my dad- I think what made my father special was love. He loved his mother. He loved the father he never knew and just cherished whenever he would meet somebody who knew his dad because his father had died when he was three and Uncle Carl was one. He loved this town. He loved law. He loved people. He loved his children. He loved this country and he loved the world. He loved life. He loved to study. He loved to learn. And so that just made him always step back and get himself out of the way and be there for one of these other people or Institutions or country or whatever. I think that's what made him really, really special, that degree of love. And because of that love, he was willing to work extremely hard and aim high.
Mike Donato [00:22:56] So he went from being someone who did not want to run for office to going on to having a career that was, you know, amazing. What made him such a great Congressman, in your opinion?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:23:13] I used to tell him that he just seemed like the ultimate Boy Scout. And I interviewed one of his best friends, a man by the name of. We called him Lester, but his real name was Kenneth Galbraith, who was one of the associate pastors at St Paul AME Zion Church, where dad had grown up. They had grown up together in the Boy Scouts. And the first thing he said to me was, Lou, was, you know, he was every bit of everything that a Boy Scout is supposed to be. And he just rattled off and I can't remember. Integrity, honesty, friendship, loyalty. That's who he was. He really did live all of those attributes of a good Boy Scout. And I think he carried that throughout his entire life. And it made a difference, I believe, on the Hill. He also said to so many of us that he knew he had to write the book because once he got there and he understood the historical significance of it, that he was with the largest group of African Americans that had been in Congress since Reconstruction, he went back to understand the historical significance of that. Then when he learned at Howard University that a charter had been created for them for the United States to do something about the freedmen, then he said, well, that's my job, too. And then when he learned that the disparity in health care, especially for minorities, well, then he cared about that, too. So he kept. Every time he learned where there was a need, he worked really hard to do what he could to make a difference.
Mike Donato [00:25:02] Tell me something about your father that might surprise people?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:25:08] One thing that might surprise people about my father is that he did think about dropping out of Congress. Early on in his career there was a period where some people weren't so sure he could measure up. And it was pretty intense. A lot of things were in the newspaper, people saying he was power hungry. I mean, all kinds of different things were going on. And it was difficult for me to see that. I was away at Ohio University, and I was a senior, and the person I was working at, the Black Studies Institute. And my supervisor encouraged me to organize a group and get a whole. He would make it possible for me to borrow a bus from Ohio University. And so we showed up at one of the 21st District Caucus meetings. So. But on one of our flights back from Cleveland to Washington, and he said, you know, I don't know, maybe I don't want to do this. You know, maybe I. Maybe I just shouldn't do this. Well, on the one hand, he was talking to me, you know, as his oldest, you know, his daughter. But I didn't really know how to handle it. It was too big for me. So I was just quiet. Obviously, he decided to hang in there. Thank goodness he decided to hang in there. And he also said he did not want to die in Congress. I think people might be surprised. Some people would think, gee, being a congressman is such an incredible achievement, and it's okay for some people, too, stay there until the end. But he. I think that part of him that didn't really want politics but was responsible like the good Boy Scout in stepping up with what he truly believed was what God had asked him to do. He didn't want to die there. So I think he was really happy that he had this law degree, that the education paid off. And now because of what he had done, he could do something he couldn't have done 30 years earlier in law and be part of a white law firm. He could be a teacher at Case Western Reserve.
Mike Donato [00:27:27] After telling me that story there, were you surprised by how long he did serve then?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:27:33] Sort of. And I've thought more about that lately, that it wasn't easy for him to take care of, raise four children. So many people thought, he's a congressman, and they would come to Washington and think that he should be able to do this for them and that for him. And he did try to do everything he could, and he was honest. So I knew that he was making sacrifices for us. I knew that they thought the world of their mother, that Uncle Carl got angry that his mom had to clean houses. I saw them go from the different stations of their lives, so I kind of cared. I knew he was there because he was still recovering from raising us, making sacrifices. And then there's the man, Mister- They called him Izzy, who had given him a job as the first sales clerk from an Army Navy store. His son has a letter on the wall of their home where my father's saying, you know, it's so hard financially to keep a home in Maryland and still have a place that I rent here in Cleveland to come back. And he came back almost every weekend all of his life. I don't think a lot of people realize how hard a struggle it was for him financially to do for us. And to do the job.
Mike Donato [00:29:11] I think that's something that people don't think about. And the other thing is, it's pretty much a 24/7 job. So, you know, they can always come back to Cleveland. That's when he can relax. But talk about, did he ever, you know, tell me about the discipline that it took for his job?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:29:30] The discipline that it took for Dad to do his job was tremendous. I remember coming, when I would be home in between summer breaks and, you know, maybe 5:30 or 6 in the morning, I'd hear him get up, take a shower, and sometimes I actually felt tension in my stomach for him. Many times, all the way up until the time he died, he would be working on a speech or remarks. He always went prepared. The hours he spent down working on the Hill were amazing. He worked seven days a week, most of the time, and he was there till 11 o'clock at night and got up really, really early in the morning. It was amazing. So, as a daughter, sometimes I kind of anguished for him. I worried about him, and it made me feel a little worried sometimes. But he did his thing and I admire him for it.
Mike Donato [00:30:44] This is a kind of a tough one, you know, with such a long, distinguished career. But what do you think from your opinion is his greatest accomplishment from what he achieved in Congress?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:30:56] You know, let me look and see what I have. [laughs] Because I think I had- I'm not even sure if I did that one.
Mike Donato [00:31:02] I mean, if you have one, I mean, that's a tough one.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:31:05] Oh, okay. Okay. I can say what I said here. [laughs] I think his greatest achievement in Congress was in being a man about love and being about excellence and standing for the virtues of Boy Scouts. I think he helped us to make a little progress away from thinking about race so much because he was respected as Lou Stokes. He may have come in there as one of the black congressmen who needed to help found the Congressional Black Caucus. He always stood for whatever he felt was right. But about a year ago, there was a special program on the Hill for all the members of Congress who had passed between 2015 and 2016. I had so many members come up to me and say, your father was just a tremendous person. I did not know who they were. My son Eric worked on the Hill. He had some sense of who this person and that person was. But when I look at the news and I see what's going on currently in politics and I see some of the stratification, that wasn't the case with these guys who might be on one side of the aisle on certain issues today. But when it came to dad, and that's going to help, that helps our country, it helps people grow a little bit. And I think it also played out in his staff. He had a certain bar, he told them he wanted his office to be the best and they were, they were known that way. But they were also really close to him. And after he left, they were still reaching out to him for advice about their careers, to treat him and my mother Jay to dinner for their birthdays. And all of them, literally all of them went on to achieve at very high levels. Their vice president of this, president of that. They're amazing. So I think those are- That's what he achieved the most.
Mike Donato [00:33:29] That's a great answer. Talk a little bit about this project, this year long project, you know, the city? I mean, everyone in the city is getting behind this from businesses, colleges. What does it mean to you and the family to see this project? What does the project mean to see this happen?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:33:49] Regarding this yearlong project, remembering my father and my uncle, I just want to say thank you and I'd like for President Johnson to know how grateful we are. I live in Maryland, so I have not been able to come here for as many events. And each time I receive something in the mail, a personal letter, the event list, I am just overwhelmed with gratitude. I think that if my dad and uncle could speak, they would say, they would shake their heads, as they both could do, and just say thank you so much. It's just amazing. It also lets me know how much people here must have been touched by them to launch this. And then from what I understand, other people reached out to CCC to say, hey, can we be a part of that? Which is pretty amazing. It's like their heartbeat is still pulsing and that's pretty emotional for me and I'm sure other members of my family. So I- It's just amazing. But that's what I think they wanted. They wanted to do something that would keep on living. They knew that. They knew what it was like not to have somebody like a father. And they cherished their mother for trying to step up and do all she could. And so I think something about that made them do what they did to help others. And the idea of it to continue going and going, I think is a tribute to, to them and what they did with their lives. It's a tribute to this school and the leadership and the vision. It's a tribute to God because I think he's the one who kind of orchestrates and oversees and helps Us just do these things. So that's what I think it means.
Mike Donato [00:36:07] I couldn't ask for anything more there. How about if you read- So maybe you can just kind of talk about what this is and then go ahead and read it.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:36:17] Okay. I have my autograph book from my sixth grade graduation from Ludlow Elementary School in Shaker Heights. And our family was one of several that fought to make integration work. And our people had spoken to my dad and my mother, Jay, to say, hey, you guys should move there. You know, with the work. Dad told me it was that people reached out to him and said, with the work you're doing in civil rights, I think you might want to live over in this community. And so we did. And for my grandmother, it was special because she'd always been a maid. Now she was going to be a resident. And we were all there together. And when I graduated, my father wrote in this. I was 12 years old. June 5, 1963. Dear Shelley, the ladder of success in life has many steps. When you reach the top of the ladder, you will look back upon each step which was a part of that success. Continue looking up the ladder until you have reached the top. Reaching the top is not easy, and each step will require determination as you go from one step to another. Take with you friends courage, honesty, religion, love and humbleness. Success is made of these ingredients with proud love. Daddy,
Mike Donato [00:37:50] What does that mean to you?
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:37:52] Well, I think it's so amazing that he was trying so hard to reach us with such seriousness about the most important things to do with your life. And just looking back at this, I was 12 years old, but it's in there. But he tried to do the same thing for every person he worked with, especially young people. He didn't try to do that just for me as a daughter. He wanted to do it with everybody he could in his race. And there's another poem my sister Angela talks about, Be the best of whatever you are. Dad wrote poetry, inspired me to write poetry. And he also made records where he recorded himself reciting love poems to our mother. And so I wanted one when I graduated from sixth grade, and he did one for me, and he recited that poem. Unfortunately, I lost it, but I can still hear him reciting that poem. So I always felt like it was okay if maybe I had a big dream, if I fell a little bit short of it. As long as I was the best of whatever I was, that was okay.
Mike Donato [00:39:21] Beautiful. I think that's it. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:39:24] Thank you very much.
Mike Donato [00:39:25] One second. The very first question. Okay, I'm just going to ask you to read in the very first one. Just.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:39:33] Okay.
Mike Donato [00:39:34] Tell me about the memories of your Uncle Carl.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:39:38] When I think of my Uncle Carl, I smile because he had such a great personality. But as a member of the family, we also had a chance to see him when he was not so happy, moody, cranky, sleepy. So my earliest memory of him was in 1958, that August that we went to live with my grandmother. And we have photographs of Angie, Chucky and me looking pretty grungy, but by this old Buick of my father's, I guess. And Uncle Carl and I sort of cherish those now and then. There were regularly times that he would come by to see grandma and have dinner, and she'd fix a plate for him, and he'd have on a suit and tie. If dad had already started eating, he'd be the big brother to mess with the little brother a little bit. And grandma would have to say, that's enough. But on the weekends, he'd come by in his casual things and slippers. Sometimes she'd fix him breakfast, and then he'd hit the couch. He loved to read westerns, so he would read one of those books until he fell asleep. But as the years went by, you know, we were always close. He would come to Maryland for Christmas sometimes. He was at my wedding and really excited about it. And dad, after he passed, dad sent me a photograph. You know, I wanted you to see that Carl had this. And he's like, Shelley's wedding. And he has this circle and that circle. And then he. You know, the campaign years. And then when he got sick, too. My youngest son, Grant, was born then. But he did get to hold him. He was pretty excited, the idea of another generation. The other thing is, he liked family history. And I'm kind of the family historian. So he kind of turned to me, and dad turned to me and gave me little tidbits and. And encouraged me to. But he called me Shelley Girl. And he always. I have so many letters from my father saying that Carl would say, that's Shelley. She's special. And he also had wanted me to follow in their footsteps for politics. But I was running into understanding more and more of what it took to raise my sons in our society. And I wanted them to make it, so I chose not to. But so on his 10th anniversary, he wrote me a note. And he said, dear Shelly, you know, your dad and I, Lou and I always thought you would be next, but if you won't, Brett and Eric will. So my sons really cherish that.
Mike Donato [00:42:35] Beautiful. Thank you so much.
Shelley Stokes-Hammond [00:42:37] Thank you very much. Thank you.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
