Mrs. Lorraine Edwards

Mrs. Lorraine Vela Marie Jones Edward(s) was born in Charleston, Missouri on Friday, September 23, 1927 to Mr. Joe Jones, farmer and Mrs. Odessa Kuykendall Jones, housewife. She became an ancestral angel on Thursday, July 6, 2023. Lorraine lived a wholesome life in her 95 years and lives eternally in our hearts. Lorraine is the oldest child of Odessa Kuykendall (born 1897, MS); the Granddaughter of Lillie Kuykendall (born 1866, MS); the Great-granddaughter of Dolly Hairston (born 1832, VA). Her formerly enslaved ancestors arrived in America after 1619 and her maternal ancestors are of Dutch descent from the Kuykendall clan. Her mother Odessa Kuykendall was one of 22 Kuykendall children. Her paternal ancestors are of Native American descent. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed January 1, 1863 but did not reach Texas until June 19, 1865, Juneteenth. The Kuykendall family understood the geography of opportunity and Interstate 55 connected them between Water Valley, Mississippi * Senatobia, Mississippi *Memphis, Tennessee * Parkin, Arkansas * Charleston, Missouri * Sikeston, Missouri then Interstate 70 to Kansas City, Missouri. Many Black families then migrated to northern states for job opportunities. As a child, she attended Smithdale High School and her highest grade she completed was 9th grade. Among her favorite teachers while in school was Ms. Bennett. She was baptized at Cherry Beam Missionary Baptist Church in Arkansas and renewed her commitment to God at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Missouri. As a young girl she worked as a sharecropper. Her father, Mr. Joe Jones was a farmer and grew their own food. The work was extremely hard. In order to escape sharecropping, she married Mr. Ray Masters at the age of 16. The marriage was annulled after only three months. Mother lived with both of her parents until 1942 when her parents divorced. As a result, Mrs. Lorraine Vela Marie Masters would find herself leaving Missouri to live with her father and his new wife in Memphis, Tennessee. It was her paternal grandmother who helped to raise her as a teenage girl. Memphis, Tennessee is where she met and married Mr. Elijah Edwards on March 15, 1947. As newlyweds, they drove from Memphis, Tennessee to Detroit, Michigan and the night of their arrival on May 15, 1947, her husband accidentally killed two people in a car wreck as they walked out in front of the car. Elijah was sent to jail for 18 months because he left the scene and young Lorraine found herself alone and traumatized in a strange city, Detroit. At the insistence of her husband, Elijah, she would return to Memphis, Tennessee to live with his parents. Upon Elijah’s release from jail in 1949, she returned to Detroit, Michigan to join him. Sadly, their marriage was never the same, they separated but remained married until his untimely death of a heart attack in 1966. In the early 1950s mother would meet and fall in love with musician Mr. Lawrence Hicks who fathered her three eldest children – Jonathan Jerome Hicks (1957), Sherry Lynn Hicks (1958), and Calvin Gerard Edward (1959). She would later meet and fall in love with upholsterer Mr. James Alexander Gillette, from Belize, Central America, who fathered the remaining four children (each given her last name) – Sandra Marie Edward (1961), James Alexander Edward (1962), Kenny Edward (1963), and Kathaleena Edward (1964). Raising seven children alone was hard, but her faith in Jesus Christ and support from her great uncle Mr. Samuel Kuykendall (brother to Odessa Kuykendall) who had migrated from Missouri to Detroit, Michigan in 1937, helped to sustain her and give her hope. Mom loved her children and at age 30 and until her death at 95, she spent 65 years sacrificing, worrying, hoping, and praying for her children. Mom once wrote “I enjoyed my children just to cook a meal and watch them eat and enjoy. I couldn’t cloth[e] all of them as I would have liked, but I did what I could and the childhood life I had growing up made me a better person and mom. I lived and breathed for my seven children. I had sad days, but my children never knew.” She loved letters and cards and wrote in beautiful cursive handwriting. Mom also loved to cook and often made homemade cheesecake, pound cake, goulash – a soup or stew made with meat and vegetables. She especially loved cooking for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Among her favorite items she personally enjoyed was freshly roasted peanuts dropped into a cold Pepsi Cola. She was an avid seamstress and often made clothes for her children and her daughter’s dolls. She loved to go fishing, pile the children in her station wagon headed to “the foot of the River” – a park at the end of West Grand Boulevard that was strategically located near the Ambassador Bridge, and always kept our home clean and organized in spite of the demands of working as a Domestic. During her adult life, Mother worked as a Domestic cleaning homes and helping raise children for the Frankel and Lipshaw families in the suburbs of Michigan. We all have fond memories of her leaving our home located at 9026 Burnette in Detroit to take several bus transfers to and from work at the early morning hours and arriving home late in the evening. Lorraine loved music and is dancing now with some of those she loved like her daughter, Sherry Lynn Hicks Allen, her Great Uncle Samuel Kuykendall, her mother Odessa Kuykendall Jones, her father Joe Jones, her three siblings – brother Robert Lee Jones, Sr., brother Jesse Lee Jones, and sister Floretta Beatrice Jones McIntosh – and a host of family and friends.

Mrs. Lorraine Edwards

September 23, 1927 - July 6, 2023