Editor’s Note: This series, featured three times a year, on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Grandparent’s Day will profile men and women who serve as inspiration for their children and grandchildren. These stories will celebrate the essence of this set of holidays created to acknowledge the strength, commitment, perseverance of parents and grandparents. While the people profiled may not be directly or always relatable, their lessons and their struggle will resonate clearly.
My friend D’Andra Walker has a guiding force in her life, a woman whose photo holds a prominent place in D’Andra’s home, in her office, and on her phone. This woman is the person who pushed her to be the best, who taught her to never accept that she couldn’t work harder and do more. This is the woman who taught D’Andra how to be independent.
My friend D’Andra calls this woman, her grandmother, Babysweety.
Babysweety with her granddaughter D'Andra Walker
Babysweety (her mother’s pet name) was born in Oakwood, Texas on December 30, 1936. The young girl who was born just five days after Jesus’ birthday was named Nazrie Abram. Nazrie means “keeper,” and is rooted in the word Nazareth, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. The meaning of her name, “keeper”, is fitting as she lived a life where she kept a deep and abiding faith in God, where she kept her family together, and where she always kept her word.
Babysweety was born to JB Abram and Winifred Talton Abram, or Mama Winnie, as she was affectionately called. Her father was a sharecropper and her mother picked cotton when she wasn’t raising Babysweety and her nine brothers and sisters.
Babysweety never discussed what she dealt with, as a black woman, in the Jim Crow South; she didn’t want to go there with her granddaughter. But we can only imagine what life was like for anyone of color during that time.
To help support her family, Babysweety would pick cotton during the summer and after school. The 60-pound bales of cotton she carried during this time gave her a bad back later in life.
Her faith in God played a prominent role in Babysweety’s childhood and remained with her into adulthood. D’Andra was witness to her grandmother reading the bible every morning and, every night, taking notes about key passages. Her faith was the basis of her life.
It was this faith and sense of tradition that encompassed a story that D’Andra told me about her grandmother, one that encapsulated Babysweety’s life of faith, tradition, and sacrifice.
Like many Baptists, Babysweety was raised with the idea that one should wear their absolute best to church—no exception.
But the reality of poverty left Babysweety and her mother to share the same pair of church shoes. When one of them went to church, the other had to stay home. The concept of wearing her everyday shoes to church was not a possibility—she had to show up and show out for Jesus. The sacrifice she made then was a common thread throughout her life: Babysweety stuck by what she thought was right, no matter what.
Babysweety attended Dunbar High School in Oakwood, Texas where she excelled at English, writing, and math.
After graduating high school, her aunt, who worked as Bing Crosby’s maid, brought her out to San Francisco. There, she was introduced to George Washington Walker, they soon married and Babysweety gave birth to their first daughter.
Soon after, George headed off to serve in the Korean War.
When he returned, they moved to a modest home in what is now considered South Los Angeles. George worked in a grocery story, which provided them with a nice living. At that time, in Los Angeles, racial tensions were overflowing. Block-busting, a practice in which real estate investors sell a home to an African-American family then buy up homes from fearful white neighbors at cut-rate prices, caused a racial segregation which persists today.
Babysweety and George had five children together (her youngest died as an infant). When I asked D’Andra about the nature of her grandparent’s relationship, she said that they learned to love each other. Their marriage wasn’t based on love at first site or a fleeting moment, it took time, but they developed an incredibly strong respect and deep love for each other through hard work and their faith.
In 1967, Babysweety was hired at Bank of America. At a time when African Americans could only work in administrative positions, she convinced her bosses to train her as a teller.
Like so many women at that time, and like many women in our current age, Babysweety had to pull long hours before she was given a title commensurate with her duties.
After proving herself as a teller, she was promoted to the loan officer, becoming one of the first African-American women to hold such a position.
And even though she faced racism, not only from the management, but also from customers who didn’t want a black woman handling their banking, she worked at Bank of America for twenty years.
Babysweety's high school graduation photo; In a family portrait from the mid 70s; Babysweety was one of Bank of America's first African-American loan officers
In 1977, George Washington Walker became Reverend Walker (she would always call him “Rev” from then on). He became the pastor at Philippian Baptist Church in South Los Angeles. Since her husband was Pastor, Babysweety became the first lady of the church.
The position of first lady is held in great honor, but required tremendous work. Babysweety’s role demanded that she support her husband’s role as pastor (she would even critique his sermons) and provide emotional support to the congregation. She was also responsible for handling many of the logistics for Sunday’s service. In many ways, the first lady fulfills the same role as the pastor. The only difference being she doesn’t stand at the pulpit—the sacrifice of time and energy is the same.
Serving as first lady was a role Babysweety relished and felt honored to have. She sat in the 2nd pew, behind the deacons and took her job seriously. It was a place and position she would hold until Reverend Walker retired in 2000.
Babysweety was a natural caregiver. But she did not dispense her care and concern by placating those who were the recipients of her attention. She was there to guide them, not accept or condone their bad choices. The care giving started with her brother, who was 15 years younger when she brought him to live with her. She acted as a surrogate mother to her husband’s nieces. And she raised her granddaughter (D’Andra’s cousin) because Babysweety’s son was only 22 when his daughter was born and her mother was battling severe mental illness.
But there was something unique about her relationship with her granddaughter D’Andra. Babysweety had a kind of expectation for her that she placed on very few other people.
D’Andra’s father was distinctly absent in her life, so her mother was forced to work long hours, overnight from 5pm to 5am at United Airlines. This reality only intensified D’Andra’s relationship with Babysweety, who was her grandmother and surrogate mother.
D’Andra told me that while religion filled an important part in Babysweety’s life, the lessons her grandmother taught her were more about morality than religion. Her expectations for her granddaughter were great and high. When she was accepted to UCLA, Babysweety knew D’Andra really wanted attend USC and pushed her to find a way to get in. She always pushed her granddaughter to get better grades, to do more, and to remove any pre-determined limits.
At the time, the expectations she had for her granddaughter seemed unfair to D’Andra, in fact, she would sometimes resent that so much was expected of her. But as an adult, D’Andra thinks Babysweety’s high expectations were the best gift her grandmother have given her. Being independent and self-sufficient has provided D’Andra a freedom she wouldn’t otherwise have.
After she left Bank of America in the late 1980’s, it was time for the next and final venture in Babysweety’s life. She started, together with her husband, Walker’s Residential Board and Care, an assisted living facility for the mentally disabled. Her work at “the family business” mirrored the work she carried out within her family. Babysweety juggled many positions at Walkers’ with the same focus and fluidity. And over the next twenty years, she and her husband opened three more facilities.
She finally had the security that eluded her in her youth.
Last spring, Babysweety had a heart attack.
She did her best to hide the news from her grandchildren. But her efforts to conceal what had long been a problem (something that D’Andra discovered later on) were futile. After surgery and recovery, she took it slow for a month. But was soon, she was back to normal routine, running the family business and taking care of her children and surrogate children.
But she had gone back too soon…
A few days before Labor Day, D’Andra’s aunt was headed to see her mother when she found Babysweety collapsed in her home.
Later that day, they discovered five blood clots in her brain. She had a stroke.
D’Andra couldn’t bear to see her grandmother in such a physical state. She was paralyzed on the left side of her body, but refused to accept or acknowledge it. But Babysweety’s determined spirit was not paralyzed. She kept on trying to get out of bed, as if she wasn’t paralyzed. She fell several times as a result.
In April 2011, when she had another stroke, D’Andra knew that Babysweety’s time had come.
D’Andra saw her for the last time in early April. It was incredibly painful for her to see a woman, who always took great pride in her strength and in her hard work, in a position of extreme vulnerability. She didn’t look like the Babysweety who was first lady of Philippian Baptist Church. On the outside, she was a different person.
Babysweety died on April 5, 2011. Reverend Walker got a call from the hospital informing him of her passing and D’Andra and her mother soon drove to the family home.
D’Andra walked into her grandparents home to find the chairs in the kitchen removed and her grandfather furiously mopping the floor. Babysweety had always been steadfast about keeping a clean floor in the kitchen, and during their marriage, she expected her husband to handle that task.
Reverend Walker looked up from his vigilant mopping, and ordered D’Andra and her mother to leave right away. He had work to do for his first lady.
And he couldn’t bear the thought of his granddaughter and daughter seeing him cry.
D’Andra told me her grandfather harbored great guilt that Babysweety died before he did; he was well aware of the place she had in the lives of their grandchildren. He felt that they needed her more than him.
Babysweety had a very certain sense of what death meant. When D’Andra was growing up, her grandmother always told her that when babies were born, she would cry, because they were being born into a world of sin. But she also told D’Andra that when people died, everyone should wear white and rejoice, because that person would be reunited with God.
Babysweety wearing her prized church hats; With her husband, Reverend George Walker (middle)
The void in D’Andra’s life left by Babysweety’s passing can’t be filled by anything or anyone else. Like all guiding forces in our lives, that space will always remain empty, no matter how hard we try to fill it. The pain D’Andra feels is only intensified when she realizes her children will never know Babysweety, the woman who gave her such strength, who expected the best from her, and who refused to accept that her granddaughter couldn’t handle more.
There were two funerals held for Babysweety. The first was in Los Angeles at Trinity Baptist Church. While her presence was missed in the second row, her prized church hats lived on. D’Andra and other women in the Walker family donned Babysweety’s hats in a fitting tribute to a woman who would expect them to look their best.
But it was the second funeral that fulfilled Babysweety’s wish to be buried where she was born.
A couple days after the first funeral, she was buried in the town where she was, 75 years earlier, born poor and black under Jim Crow.
On the surface, not much had changed. Except for a few new doublewide trailers, Oakwood was still grassy, with farm animals and crops crowding the landscape.
But now, Babysweety owned over 300 acres of land in a town where she used to carry 60-pound bushels of cotton on her back. As she returned home for the last time, she had risen in more ways than one.
At the burial, her family and her ten grandchildren surrounded a woman who was their grandmother, mother, aunt, cousin, and ultimately, a surrogate mother to all of them. For me, Babysweety, her life and accomplishments, serve as a reminder of the impact grandparents can have on their grandchildren. Grandparents are always there to pick up the pieces when their grandkids, regardless of age or position in life, are in need or run into big life obstacles. And Babysweety, throughout her entire adult life, did just that.
D’Andra wore white to the funeral, as Babysweety would have expected. After all, it was a time to rejoice—she was with Jesus now.
But she refused to view Babysweety’s body in the open casket. That was one memory she didn’t want to have. The woman who was a guiding force in her life would live on in the way D’Andra intended—in photos and memories of the first lady of Philippian Baptist Church, the woman who saw something bigger for herself, the woman who took such pride in how she dressed, but more importantly, the woman who took great pride in the way in which she lived her life.
But D’Andra did know that Babysweety was buried in a suit.
And her shoes? They were her own.
She didn’t have to wait at home anymore.
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