A Life Constructed. Delon Hampton
her given name, Alzadie, was spelled differently than the given name on my birth certificate, Elzatie. Which is correct? For now, I am assuming the spelling on the gravestone is correct.
My trip left me with an emptiness and a regret for never knowing my mother or many members of my family, but also with an appreciation for what my family accomplished and experienced, as well as a fullness for the successes I’ve been fortunate to experience.
Like the buildings, airports, train stations, and other structures that will be here long after I am gone, the life I have constructed was built from the ground up, with plenty of challenges and problems along the way. Its structure is complicated, yet simple. It is built solidly, but over the years has become a bit weathered and developed a few cracks.
This is my story.
FIRST AND foremost let me thank my wife, Sonia M. Hampton, for her support and encouragement during the writing of this book.
Two others who were with me all the way and made major contributions to the finished product are Dr. Janet Jones Hampton and Mrs. Gayle Jones Lewis. Their advice, counsel, hard work, and dedication to the completion of my book have proven indispensable. I could not have done it without their support.
In addition, the encouragement of my friends Elijah B. Rogers and Dr. Mary Conroy has been a source of strength.
My family, sisters-in-law Mrs. Meriel Douglas and Mrs. Mary K. Douglas, and my nieces, Dr. Leslie Douglas Churchwell, Dr. Susan M. Douglas, Mrs. Sarah Douglas Squiers, and Stacy L. Douglas, Esq., provided most of the family photographs contained herein. My cousin, Herman D. Douglas, provided text on Douglas family history, photographs, and a tour of our ancestral home. I am also grateful to the University of Illinois Archives for permission to reprint the picture of Dr. Ralph Beck (Faculty and Staff Press Release File, RS 39/1/11) and the Architect of the Capitol for the image of the US Capitol Visitor Center under construction.
Thanks a million also to all others who helped me on my journey through life. They are recognized herein.
Finally, I am especially grateful to Purdue University for honoring my family and me by publishing this book.
MY EARLIEST memory is sitting on a footlocker in front of a window in the living room of our third floor apartment at 3853 South Langley Avenue on the South Side of Chicago, watching for Kat to come home from work.
Kat was the youngest of my two sisters, both of whom were teenagers when I was born. She and I were closer in years if nothing else, and her arrival home from work was a daily marker in my youngest years. Unfortunately, before I was old enough to know her better, Kat was gone. One of my last recollections of her was during her wedding, at a simple ceremony held in our family’s apartment in Chicago with only a few family members present. She idolized her husband, Chat, and Kat and Chat were deeply in love. Tragically, their love affair ended shortly after their marriage, when Kat died from tuberculosis. Chat subsequently slipped into alcoholism, which would ultimately help kill him shortly after the death of the wife he loved so much.
Vera was the older of the two sisters and left home when I was only about five years old. As a result I don’t remember much about growing up with her either, though I also remember her wedding, which—in contrast to Kat’s—was a huge affair at the Blackwell AME Zion Church. To this day it puzzles me how she and my parents could have afforded such a ceremony. Maybe it was because she was the first to get married. As the ring bearer at the wedding, I wore the fanciest outfit I had ever worn at the time: a black and white suit made from velvet, complete with a pair of short pants.
With Vera and Kat gone from our home, my world revolved around the woman I called my mother: Elizabeth Lewis Hampton. I never knew until I was much older just how hard life had been for her, but now that I do, I value and respect all she did for me even more.
The man I called my father, Uless Hampton, worked at the Tuthill Co., which literally helped build the city of Chicago beginning in the late 1800s when it started making bricks, and then later pumps, meters, and other equipment for the construction industry. I never had a serious conversation about anything with Uless, and never had much of a relationship with him either. The only thing I really learned from him was the desire and importance of reading and learning—and that came only after my mother had kicked him out of the house. When Uless departed, he left behind a small but significantly rich library of classics that I devoured, including books by Shakespeare, Churchill, and Plato. And when those books were done, I found myself becoming an avid visitor to our neighborhood library in search of more. How a man who worked in a pump factory and who never finished the eighth grade could become so attracted to such literature is both amazing and inspirational, and it fostered in me an interest in literature and arts that continues to this day. I saw Uless only twice after he and my mother divorced and he left our home: once after Vera convinced him he should give me some money I needed for school, and once when I was attending the University of Illinois and he came with other members of my family for a visit.
I recall meeting only three members of my father’s family. Uncle Jack Hampton and his wife, Aunt Ann, lived in Kansas City, Missouri. I always looked forward to their visits, because they always brought me a gift. Uncle Charles Hampton operated a truck vending business from which he sold produce on Chicago’s South Side. When I was a teenager I briefly worked for him. I remember that the work was hard and the pay was low.
While Uless was steeped in the classics, my mother was a simple woman. Her search for a better life had led her to the big city of Chicago with little more than her small-town Texas sensibilities and her unwavering faith in God. She worked at various times as an elevator operator and as a maid in downtown Chicago hotels. To make ends meet, she also cleaned houses, worked as a maid for wealthy Chicago families, and would occasionally rent out the spare rooms in our apartment.
Elizabeth Hampton’s love life was just as tough as her work life. She was not very good at choosing mates. After Uless moved out, she became involved with a man who rented a room in our apartment. She and David Mixon eventually dated and got married, but his addition to our family was anything but blissful. Dave was an alcoholic who lost his job shortly after he married my mother. From that point on he lived solely off her meager earnings. He and I never got along and clashed frequently, coming close to exchanging blows on more than one occasion. I had no respect for him, and he had no respect for me. As a result, we coexisted in a state of armed neutrality, refereed by my mother.
Yet any love lost on Dave Mixon made the love between my mother and me even stronger. Despite being poor and black and living day-to-day on the South Side of Chicago, she somehow always found a way to make sure we had a good place to live, clothes to wear, and food on the table.
She could not afford health insurance, so the only medical attention I received before going to college (besides the standard preventative vaccinations in primary school) was one visit to a dentist. Instead, my mother would rely on homemade remedies she had learned in her country days in Texas to cure my many illnesses, ranging from jaundice to double pneumonia.
Once, when I had the croup, she took to the streets of inner-city Chicago to find a chicken—not just any chicken, but specifically a black chicken—that she killed and boiled. She rendered the bird’s fat to make a foul-smelling salve that she rubbed on my chest and then covered me with a heated towel. She used the broth from the chicken as a soup to feed me. Later, when I was older and she recounted this story, she remained steadfast that this remedy had saved my young life, all but ignoring questions about how she ever found a black chicken on the streets of Chicago in the first place.
While the fat of a black chicken helped cure my lungs, it was peanuts that saved my eyesight, according to my mother. My eyes were always weak, and my eyesight a matter of great concern to my mother. To make my eyes stronger she began to feed me peanuts regularly. Miraculously, my vision began to improve. And I became addicted to the antidote my mother prescribed