Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Life through the eyes of Edith Renfrow Smith

 

Edith Renfrow Smith receives her honorary doctorate from Grinnell College in 2019.

     A big part of my job is brevity. To take a story, sift it down to its essentials, and tell the tale in 719 words. But that seemed a crime with a life as long and interesting as Edith Renfrow Smith's, even running at more than twice the length, as my first column on her did Monday. So I divided out a second part, and still had to overlook important aspects to her life.

     “There is no message!” objected Edith Renfrow Smith, when I suggested that readers will expect her to share wisdom gleaned over her long life — she turns 107 on Wednesday. “People worked hard! And didn’t let the kids run the street. They always kept their children busy doing something and they were always looking to the future.”
     I’d call that wisdom aplenty.
     On Monday, Sun-Times readers were introduced to Smith, and learned about her extraordinary life: how her grandparents were born into slavery, how she became the first Black graduate of Grinnell College and came to Chicago to work in 1937. Though we never even got to the bulk of her career, from 1954 to 1976, as a Chicago Public Schools teacher.
     That’s how I met her; thanks to a CPS colleague and reader, George Lopatka.
     “I was just out of college when Beethoven school opened,” said Lopatka, 81. “I was a 22-year-old. She was 47, a master teacher.”
     For years, he’d phone her. Recently Lopatka decided to visit, and asked if I wanted to come along. I went, knowing absolutely nothing of the marvelous person who awaited me. Just the opposite: expecting every cliche of old age that I’d be embarrassed to articulate here. Imagine my surprise.
George Lopatka and Edith Renfrow Smith
     
     Lopatka told the story of Muhammad Ali coming to their school.
     “He was telling the kids, ‘Black is beautiful,’” Lopatka remembered. “Before that, you’d never say somebody was ‘Black.’ ... ‘Black’ was an insult. I would break up a fight, and ask the kids, ‘What are you fighting for?’ and one would say, ‘He said my mother was Black.’”
     One moment in a whirl of history Smith has seen. Yet she seems a person who seemingly glided untouched through a century of struggle. She doesn’t present herself as someone who had to overcome anything, but rather as someone blessed.

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4 comments:

  1. If I take nothing else from this marvelous tale, I would do well to emulate Edith Renfrow Smith's ability to know and interact with her neighbors. My instinct in her situation would be to hunker down, never leave my room, and limit my social interactions to texting my sisters and brother. Thank you Edith, thank you Neil. May you live longer and help the rest of us to prosper, i.e. live better.

    john

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  2. Excellent stories. In a city given to renaming public spaces, how about telling CPS, “move over Beethoven, make way for Edith Renfrow Smith Public School.”

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  3. This story is great. I enjoy how you just came across this. Well written and she does have some great things to say. And she seems in quite good health.

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  4. Since you had more than you could put in the paper I would hope that you write some more about her in the blog. I assume she is not riding around in that car any more.

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