On December 25, 1973, our family lost a mother, grandmother, sister, aunt when Cora Allen Black Warren passed away.

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of my Aunt Cora.  She was born January 3, 1886.   In March of 1913 she married Henry Charley Warren. And the two of them had 5 children, Wilbert, Charles, Edna, Sam, and James.   The 1930 census record shows that Aunt Cora and Uncle Charley lived in the same house I grew up in (see line 14 – 17).

For a while she lived in the Jordan Parks housing projects.  My earliest memories of her involved walking with my grandmother to Jordan Park on Saturdays so she could spend the day with her big sister.  Usually I would sit and listen to them chat for about half an hour and them I was off to hang out with my cousins Linda, Terry and Lynette. Later on, Aunt Cora and Grandma would collect me from Cousin Edna’s (Cora’s daughter) and we’d walk back home.

As this Christmas approached I began to feel that there was a lot missing from my memories of Aunt Cora so I enlisted the help of my Cousin Edna’s granddaughter, Erica.  Erica started asking questions of her mom, Linda, and made some great discoveries.  I was so excited to get a message from her that read:

“… I talked to mom and she told me some things, she called my great grandma Cora her grandmother Granny Grunt because she was always grunting.  She was a short bow legged pigeon toed woman who dipped snuff and who would give her son James $5 to go get groceries for her all time; no matter what everyone thought was hilarious. She was a nice woman who could have a sharp tongue when needed, she lived on Fairfield Avenue in St.Pete, Fl she had oil lamps and a pump in the back yard she kept a slop jar under the bed (yuck) mom and her cousins would spend Friday nights with her, she was an overall nice person. She had a stroke and wasn’t able to talk after that and shortly after that she passed away.”