Lewis and Barbara: The Home We Chose
Carolina RamirezMost of us get to choose the life we live. Our parents might set us on a certain path, but we decide where it ends; what twists and turns we walk along the way. Barbara and Lewis didn’t always get that opportunity. Their education was shaped by a national conflict; their careers decided by cultural forces outside of their control. But in spite of discrimination and military drafts, through an unfriendly job market, they got to choose one thing.
They chose their family.
Montgomery, Alabama
Lewis loved his wife from the moment they met. They were high school students at the time, caught up in one of the most important moments in American history. Lewis remembers sitting in the church where Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. How hard it was to get to work once that boycott took effect. For Barbara, the buses had a more ominous tone.
“We was big time,” she recalls. “We was in the middle of it. The desegregation bid, the marching, all of that. The teachers had to be careful about traveling back and forth to school. It was really scary. You didn’t know from one day to the other what was going to happen.
“On the news and all of that would be about how people would be sitting in the bushes or something, and they might bomb the bus. Or they might shoot the bus. You know, you just didn’t know what was going to happen with you between home and school… there were some very ugly people out there that hated black people.”
When 17-year-old Barbara met Lewis, they weren’t allowed to eat lunch at the restaurant counter. Their drinking fountains were hidden around the corner from ones designated only for white people. Their schools were segregated, and they rode a completely different bus than the kids who lived across the street.
“I don’t want to think back,” Barbara said. “I don’t want to go back there. Because it’s such a big change, such a big difference. I’ve lived in different places, and you can really see the difference in the people and the places I’ve come through.”
Letters to New York
Barbara’s grandmother raised her. She has little memory of her father, and her mother moved to New York state in search of work. After graduating from high school, Barbara followed suit.
“The only thing I would have had to do [in Montgomery] would be to go and clean the white people’s house; be maids and things like that. You know, to go clean and wash their clothes,” Barbara said. “Those were the jobs that black people would have. There was no such thing as going to Albertsons, you know, and trying to get a job.”
While Barbara worked to put herself through school on the east coast, Lewis stayed in Montgomery. He took what jobs he could get — hardware stores, dry cleaning plants, and textile factories — until he was drafted into the Army. He served several years stateside, including a stint with the Army Reserve. Barbara wrote to him occasionally, more as a friend of his sister’s than as a lover. She knew he had feelings for her, but never expected to see him again.
Lewis cleared post just before U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated in the early 1960s. His commanding officer tried to convince him to stay, but he had other plans.
“When I first seen this girl, I said to myself: ‘that’s the girl I’m going to marry.’” Lewis said. “I didn’t tell nobody, I just said that to myself.
“After I got out, I knew she was in New York… so I told my mother I was going to Boston. I left and went to Boston, and after a while, I went to New York, where she was… after a while of making those long trips, I thought [they were] getting kind of tiresome. So I asked her to marry me, and she said yes and we set a date.”
Lewis and Barbara married in August of 1963; the same year schools in Montgomery began to desegregate.
Bedford Bound
The couple made their home in Boston, raising two daughters there until American Airlines reduced their staff at Logan Airport and Lewis sought a transfer to DFW. When they arrived in Bedford in 1983, the area was still predominantly white. But their neighbors were friendly and their daughters could walk to school from their home on Brown Trail.
“The Real Estate guy and I, we went around looking at different houses,” Lewis remembered. “This one just caught our attention. We settled on it, and we’ve been here since ‘83. We’ve been trying to do the best we could to keep it up, but since my hip went bad… this is where we are now.”
Both Lewis and Barbara are retired now, and have been for some time. They celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary this year, and their love is as strong as ever. When Lewis lost most of his mobility and nearly all of his eyesight, Barbara gladly took charge of his care. But neither of them could do the work necessary to keep their home up to code.
“If you live in a place, you don’t want it looking bad. It needed repair work, and we’re kind of Senior Citizens at 82,” Barbara said. “We weren’t able to go out and paint the outside and do the things that needed to be done.
“It’s just great to see people cooperating together and doing things together… and they mean what they’re doing. They believe in what they’re doing. They’re helping people, and that’s just great. Years ago, it wouldn’t be that… but now, people are grouping together and cooperating and getting along. It’s just great to see this happening like this.”
Barbara doesn’t mark much on her calendar, but she made a note that volunteers are coming to her house on October 19-20. It hangs behind her, in the dark corner of the first kitchen she ever truly owned, reminding her that she needn’t go back to the days when a bus ride might cost her life. Now, she can look forward. Toward a home that feels like home again, restored by a volunteer team in one of the most diverse communities in the nation.