My Mother's Obituary

After 89 years, Esther Beatrice Stewart McLaurin completed her life’s journey on Monday, February 25th, 2008.

The daughter of Hosea Henry Stewart and Gertrude (Grady) Stewart, she was born on September 27, 1918 in what is now Princeton, Indiana, but what was then a specifically African American township separate from Princeton, called Lyle Station. When her mother died of cancer while she was in high school, she took on the responsibility of being the homemaker for her father and her four brothers and single sister, and remained so until she graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School. At that time, she left home when her father remarried. She received secretarial training and became a legal secretary to her uncle, Cornelius R. Richardson, Esq., who was among the first Negro Attorneys in Indiana and a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Through his generous assistance, she was able to attend nursing school at Provident Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, a school created specifically for African American patients, which set s new level for care in a separate-but-equal segregated north. This chapter is seldom talked about, but you can find the history of Provident Hospital here.

She graduated with honors, a member of the first class of nurses eligible for registration, and successfully passed the Illinois state examination for certification as a Registered Nurse. This was during the start of World War II. On becoming an R.N., she volunteered to the Negro Army Nurse Corp during World War II and was commissioned Second Lieutenant. While stationed at Fort Bragg, she met the man who would become my father, Staff Sergeant Johnnie W. McLaurin. Both served at the 25th station hospital, Monrovia, Libera, West Africa, where they married.

After the war’s end, she moved briefly to Mississippi, and lived for a time in Indiana, before settling in Massachusetts. They had a total of six children; Michael, Martha, Allan, Melva, John, and myself, the youngest. In addition to mothering and nurturing her family, she obtained her Massachusetts State certification as a Registered Nurse. She then joined the Staff of Wesson Maternity Hospital (now a part of the Baystate Medical Center complex) as its first Registered Nurse of color. After over 30 years of service, primarily in the premature and neo-natal intensive care nurseries, she retired in 1983.

She was preceeded in death by her twin brothers, Denver and Henry Stewart of Princeton, Indiana, and her parents, and her husband of 53 years, my father, who passed in 1996. She leaves two sisters and one brother, Alice Williams of Pennsylvania, Marva Stewart and Felton Stewart of Illinois, and a sister-in-law, Jessie Ruth (McLaurin) Willis of Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition to her six children, she leaves behind 13 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

My mother’s life was one of quiet pioneering, breaking gender and color barriers that we have a hard time even appreciating today. She joined the army, before women were officially accepted int the army, and achieved an officers rank due to her level of education. She became a Registered nurse, a level of education on par with a doctor’s medical degree, in order to fulfill her calling to serve and care for others. She met a man who was of a lower rank than her officers status, and engaged in a relationship that was illegal under military rules, marrying him and remaining so for over 50 years. She broke rules, stubbornly and with a purpose, through the strength of character and a firm belief that she could achieve anything she wanted through hard work and perseverance. But within ad beyond all of this, she was my Ma, the person who raised me most directly, and influenced me most. And, though I never really appreciated it as a child, she was my hero.