About a decade before my parents tied the knot, another woman took the name of Mrs. Ebenezer Ray. Her name was Lucille. For a long time, that’s all I knew. My mother had told me my father had had a first wife. And after my mom died, I found my dad and Lucille’s divorce papers in my mother’s dresser drawer. When I told a friend that I’d thought it curious that my mother would save the divorce papers from her husband’s first marriage, but none of his writings, the friend suggested that it was by design. My mother wanted to make sure my father was free to marry. Knowing my mother, that is exactly what she was thinking. But knowing my mother, if she’d had copies of his columns, she would have kept those too. Continue reading
Lucille Manning Ray: A wife from another life
30 Jun- Comments Leave a Comment
- Categories 1939, Lucille Manning Ray, Uncategorized
Featured Posts
-
The (private) life of Riley
I confess. I am under the spell of Riley, Warrior Princess. I wait with bated breath for the next time I can get to see her don an invisibility cloak, disappear under a press conference table, then reappear, headband gone, ready for her next conquest. I, like the rest of the world, watch as […]
-
Back to school
From the moment she was born, my daughter, Zuri Adele, talked with her eyes. They took in everything, registered centuries of wisdom, expressed a range of emotion she could not logically understand. I remember watching her at a birthday party with a group of kids she didn’t know well. They were taking turns acting out […]
-
Happy Birthday, Daddy
On his 36th birthday, my father marked the occasion with a column that riffed on the Royal Family and more.
-
Lamman Rucker and his mom, Nana Malaya, in conversation
My sister Malaya Rucker-Oparabea, a dancer and storyteller, and her son, actor, producer and entrepreneur Lamman Rucker, have devoted their lives to their art. On Sunday, May 15, they talked about their relationship on an online radio program “Phenomenal Saging Mothers.”
-
Alma Stone Williams: ‘A Choice to Change the World’
“Pioneering did not frighten me. I was accustomed to studying and living with white teachers at Spelman and to reaching for high standards in all areas.”
Recent Posts
- Inside Essence: “Zuri Adele Is Teaching, Learning, And Storytelling Through Her Role On ‘Good Trouble'”
- What happens to rage repressed?
- Living History
- ‘The Donna Collection’
- Happy Hundredth Birthday, Mary Ray
- Zuri Adele is about to get into some ‘Good Trouble’
- No holiday for the fight against injustice
- Celebrating longevity
- Happy 120th birthday
- Beyond Vietnam