In this photograph my mother, Doris Graham Cleage, was at my Cleage grandparent’s house on Atkinson in Detroit, Michigan. I don’t know what the occasion was. I don’t know why she was turned like this. There were no pets. My sister and I were unlikely to be crouched down by her chair. She’s wearing both of her earrings. She wasn’t shy and also unlikely to be sobbing softly with her face hidden from the camera. I think that it would be a good photo for a story starter.

My uncle Henry Cleage probably took the photo.

The year before we had moved from Springfield, Massachusetts where my father was pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church back to Detroit where he was pastor of St. Marks Presbyterian Church. The parsonage was down the street from my grandparent’s house and I walked by it every day on my way to and from kindergarten and first grade. I might add that I walked it all by myself, crossing the busy street of Linwood at the light and walking past the isolated and wooded seminary to reach school. My sister Pearl was a preschooler and stayed home playing and napping while I toiled, uphill both ways, to and from Brady Elementary School.

In 1953 there was a church fight and my father left St. Matthew’s with 300 parishioners and started a new church, Central Congregational Church. We moved to the new parsonage on Chicago Blvd.

I first shared this photograph on Sepia Saturday in 2010, sixteen years ago.

Moving Springfield to Detroit – 1951
The Fabulous Cleages – 1952
My mother was a teacher
A Church and Two Brothers – Two Splits 1953
Tribune’s Neighorhood of the Week – Central Congregational