(Reporter readers will again be treated to a series of Black History stories with a focus on Rockdale’s Black History from Tamara Hebert Powell. Here is former editor, Mike Brown’s, editorial from 2020 introducing Tamara and his tribute to her late grandmother, Mrs. Susie Sansom Piper.—K.W.C.)
There are some people you simply cannot replace, but you have to try anyway.
One of those is the late Susie Sansom Piper who passed away October 21, 2019 at the age of 98. For 42 consecutive years Mrs. Piper wrote a Black History Month series for The Rockdale Reporter.
Pause a bit and let that sink in.
When Mrs. Piper wrote her first series for this newspaper, Jimmy Carter had just replaced Gerald Ford as president, gas was 65 cents a gallon and Elvis—yes, that Elvis—was still alive.
“Roots” was on television and “Saturday Night Fever” was in theaters. High tech was the Commodore Pet computer with its 4K of memory.
For the next 42 years Mrs. Piper wrote a variety of series. The titles included “Way Back When,” “Ebony Etchings,” “Just Folks,” “On the Other Side of the Tracks” and finally “Black History Month Series.”
They were much more than columns, they were history, sociology, social commentary and all done with g reat hea r t and warmth.
At Mrs. Piper’s funeral, it was noted that for the past four decades-plus “editing” her Black History Month stories consisted mostly of picking up the phone and going “yes, ma’am, yes ma’am, yes ma’am.”
She knew what she wanted to say and how to say it. You didn’t necessarily have to be her friend to work with her, but it’s hard to believe you could work with her and not become her friend. We certainly did.
How do we replace her? We can’t but something wonderful has happened. Mrs. Piper’s granddaughter, Tamara Powell, has picked up the keyboard and will write a Black History Month series for The Reporter which will begin next week.
You can read about her on Page 1A.
She and her beloved late brother, Jerome Hebert, were raised by Mrs. Piper and worked closely with her. In fact, she was working with her grandmother on a new book as late as just a few weeks before Mrs. Piper passed away.
We thought we were going to have Mrs. Piper forever, but, sadly, life doesn’t work that way, of course. It’s heartening to realize we had her with us for almost a century and this is not one of those cases where we lament “if only they had written it all down” when a nonagenarian passes.
She certainly wrote as much down as she could in 98 years.
Mrs. Piper would have loved that her granddaughter is following in her footsteps. Trust us on that.
If you believe in premonitions, try this one on for size. The last line from the last series Mrs. Piper wrote for The Reporter, published on Feb. 28, 2019, was this: “Yes, the beat goes on!” Indeed it does. Welcome, to our new contributor.
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