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Ken Shires
July 23, 2023
Excerpt from an email to two friends....
Clear blue sky, cool temps so far…ruined by my mind thinking of your mugs 😬
I went to a funeral Tuesday for our classmate, Clifford Watson. Besides in the halls of Enloe, I interacted with him at Lions Park playing basketball with Otha Chavis, Jerome Powell, Larry Bryant, and the Hinton twins, Willie, and William.
The funeral, for Clifford was one of the most uplifting funerals I have ever experienced. (the one I attended for Ann Carver's mother takes the cake for the most humorous.)He had a beautiful family. I did not know he had been a Marine and that Otha Chavis was his best friend.
Funerals are a lot more meaningful now than when I was younger —that’s largely because of my faith, and because they are indisputable markers of the passage of my life.
What made Clifford‘s funeral so noteworthy was the overwhelming open heartedness of the attendees. It was a reunion of old friends from the days of the 60s. Not so much Enloe friends, but people of the community in East Raleigh The love and energy in the air was a stark contrast to the way some white churches tend to mute themselves at funerals. I knew hardly anyone there, but I was infused with joy.
Randy and I have talked about the purely random things I remember from over 50 years ago. One of those instances was a time at Lion’s Park when Clifford came up to me in the hallway and asked me to loan him a nickel. (It’s been a while since I have seen a nickel.) Don’t ask me why I remember that. It recalls for me the difference in financial state of the races in those days, and at the same time, the openness of Clifford’s personality. I told people that if Clifford were standing beside me now, I would ask him to loan me some of his endearing personality. Hardly anyone there could speak of him without smiling. The music he had “specified”, for the occasion was, “Having a Party” by Sam Cooke. It was certainly fitting 🙂. The family had evidently asked Lea Funeral home to place Clifford’s Trilby on his chest as an essential part of his attire. Also fitting 🙂
Kaye Webb was there as was Paula Montague, Valerie May, Jerome Powell and Otha. I so enjoyed seeing them.
Attending the most desegregated high school between DC and Atlanta has had an enriching and positively formative impact on my life. (To my frustration, I’m still plagued with the inculcated sickness of racism.) Enloe (and Lion’s Park 🙂) has been a blessing that, certainly at that time, members of my family, my league of friends and their parents did not discern.
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