By Charlotte Dean
GFWC Landmark Woman’s Club, District 9

Alice

She was big, strong, and highly intelligent.

In that era when black women took the back seat of the bus,

Alice held her head up high and took care of those she loved--

Black or white, it didn’t matter,

She took care of “Brother” until her own strength failed.

In the late 1970s she came daily

To take care of “Mama”, my beloved grandmother,

Whose memory was failing.

One day Alice planted a white snowball bush in our back yard,

So Mama could see it from her studio,

While she painted her watercolor pictures.

Many years later, Alice’s memory is gone also.

But in my backyard--twenty-six years later,

I see the branches bowed down with white snowball blooms.