Celebrating Faith and Birdie
June 30, 2024
A small group of friends and close associates from Faith and Burdette’s long lives, gathered together at their home at 127 Jones Road for a final fairwell gathering.
Photos by Jules AllenObit
My sister Barbara and I, both born in 1952, shared over 70 years of life with our mother Faith Ringgold and our stepfather Burdette Ringgold. Burdette died just as COVID was getting started on February 1st, 2020 in Teaneck New Jersey. Faith died April 13th, 2024 in Englewood, New Jersey. Both died of natural causes and Faith died at her home, which was where I spent a lot of my time supervising her care, a few blocks from my apartment in Englewood Village.
Looking back on the 70 years or so, it doesn’t seem like such a long time. It was just our entire lives, and it wasn’t always easy.
Our father Earl Wallace, a classically trained pianist and jazz musician, eloped with our mother in 1950 when she was 20 and he was 23. Earl’s mother, Theodora Grant, married a man we knew as Chiefie, a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force in the Pacific in the early days of integration in the U.S. military. While they were away, Earl lived with Faith in their apartment on the third floor at 365 Edgecombe Avenue, which was in the building next to the one where our other grandmother, Willi Posey, whom we knew as Momma Jones, lived at 363 Edgecombe Avenue.
Meanwhile Burdette became a regular at the Wallace household. It was a gathering place for all their friends.
When Faith decided to leave Earl because of his heroin addiction, which was getting increasingly out of control, my sister and I were moved across the rooftop from Momma T’s house to live with Momma Jones. This is how it happened. It was Momma Jone’s suggestion. Burdette asked Earl if it was okay to move us. Earl consented perhaps not realizing that the plan was a serious one.
Raymond Butler, another Edgecombe Avenue friend close, and part of the circle of folk in the neighborhood who did not use drugs but who stayed close and watched over their childhood playmates who did. I was told Earl was very much loved by everyone as the smartest man anybody had ever met but from the moment he began to use heroin, the clock was ticking for him. Though she loved him, and had considered him her closest friend from the time she was 16 years old, she was also determined that we were not going down with the ship.
From what I have read about the biographies of jazz musicians of that period who used drugs, the families often stayed together and weathered the storm together, which frankly I can’t even imagine what that would have been like. Because we lived right next door and saw Momma T and Chiefie frequently, I knew my father, and mourned the loss of him in my life for as far back as I can remember.
Eventually Faith told me when I was perhaps six years old that Earl was sick and she didn’t want us to be around him. I don’t remember any mention of drugs or anything so precise except that word “sick.’ I can remember exactly where I was when she told me by way of explaining why we had left him and why she didn’t want us around him. It broke my heart and that heart break marked me for life. My sister’s experience of this was different.
Meanwhile through all of that time until he died in 1966 of an overdose, Burdette remained the solid foundation upon which my mother built a life for us. When we moved back in with Momma Jones, Faith was still an undergraduate at the City College of New York. Burdette and Momma Jones were very close friends so even when Faith dated other guys, Burdette maintained a constant presence in the household. I think he was probably always in love with her but perhaps he was shy, not a brilliant conversationalist like our father.
The story of how they finally became engaged I always found amusing. Nobody ever talks about it but I remember because Barbara and I played a key role. In 1959, when Faith finished her Master’s Degree in Art Education, Burdette found for us a two bedroom apartment in a building called St. Mary’s (Mitchell Lama Housing) in the East Bronx. Faith says during this period he was always asking her to marry him. So one day she said yes. His response was, why don’t we live together first. Faith promptly dropped him like a hot potatoe so now he was completely out.
Momma Jones, Burdette and my sister and I devised a scheme to get him back in again. Barbara and I were to wait until Faith was sleeping and then tie a string around her finger to obtain the size for the engagement ring he would purchase. The next time he asked to marry her it would be with diamond ring in hand, and with no further talk of living together. It worked.
Faith and Burdette were married at Bethany Lutheran Church in the Bronx in May of 1962. Barbara and I served as flower girls. Our cousin Cheryl, Uncle Andrew’s daughter, Faith’s niece served as maid of honor. She was given away, not by her father Andrew Jones (make footnote—Faith never really forgave Grandpa Andrew for stepping out to have a drink at Aunt Barbara’s wedding in 1950), who was still alive but by Momma Jones’ s longtime boyfriend Thomas Morrison and close family friend, whom she would subsequently marry later in her life.
My sister Barbara, who was 11 months younger than I had an entirely different kind of relationship with both our real father and our stepfather. For instance Burdette took Barbara to baseball games. You could see Yankee Stadium from Edgecombe Avenue. Meanwhile I have never been to Yankee Stadium in my life. Whereas Burdette would take me to see his mother, just me.
From the first day life was extremely different. There was no honeymoon, unless it was during that weekend before he returned to work on the assembly line at General Motors in Tarrytown. He hadn’t yet moved his clothing so I remember his going to work that week in the shirt he got married in). He worked the night shift which meant we really didn’t see much of him except on weekends or, during the summer. But when he was present he was really present. He held us enthralled with his storytelling about his life growing up on Edgecombe, chasing girls along with other myriad adventures. Right away the food we ate improved because he knew all the best restaurants in Harlem, and knew the people who ran them. He knew everybody in Harlem and everybody knew him. Gradually we met a series of men (one of whom was Chinese whom he called Yummy), who fulfilled the role of father for him, his own father having left his mother to live in Chicago, and pass for white.
Over a period of years he changed every single thing about Faith, mostly in terms of providing her with a great deal more leeway to pursue her career as an artist. And Faith changed every single thing about him, adding stability and security to his life.
As for Earl, visits to see both grandmothers gave us ample opportunities to see him. I can see him in my mind’s eye sitting at the piano when I was a child. I can remember that what he played was beautiful. But the picture in my head has no sound. I can’t even recall whether he was playing jazz standards or classical pieces. I can’t recall the sound of anything he ever played. If he ever made any recordings, I never heard them. Grandpa Bob, Momma T’s first husband and Earl’s father was there as well. He played the guitar and often visited us when we moved to the Bronx and when we moved back to Manhattan.
As a child growing up on Edgecombe I understood very little about the relations of all these people. All I knew was that it seemed as though I had four grandfathers: Mr. Morrison, Grandpa Andrew, Grandpa Bob and Chiefie. Who was married to who was way over my head.
Moving to Englewood to be near them in 2007 was the best thing I ever did because I had a chance to get to know them as adults and they were fascinating. It’s 2024 and now I have spent more time living in Englewood than anywhere else. I miss them a lot but we also had a lot of fun.
Michele Wallace, Englewood NJ 2024