Grandson Comes Home to Give the Speech of a Lifetime: Tribute to His Grandmother

Everybody worth their salt loves their grandmother. Right? 

Maybe so, but there was a lot more on his mind than parental love when Prentice Cawley came home to Pacific this week to help his family celebrate the life and legacy of his grandmother Marie Adams. 

September 1, the day of her funeral was his 51st birthday. And he was asked to give the tribute to Marie, who died August 26, at age 98.

Pacific High School alumni of 1985-88 would remember Prentice as an active kid who could do it all. He was very smart and was a star athlete who played football as a freshman and varsity basketball as a sophomore, junior and senior, was twice basketball MVP, and once defensive player of the year. In track he set a 400 meter dash record that stood for 27 years. He played the trombone in the school band. 

He landed a basketball scholarship to the University of Missouri at Rolla. After two years he transferred to Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville where he earned a BS in engineering and went on to capture a series of really good jobs in food engineering, with Anheuser Busch and Kroger. Today he is director of engineering with Dessert Holdings, a food manufacturing company that specializes in sweets.

It would almost sound hokey to say Dessert Holdings got the icing on the cake when they landed Prentice, but it would not be far fetched.

Standing in front of a packed house of family members and friends Wednesday afternoon, Prentice was all charm and sweetness.

I have to tell you . . . I’ve probably published twenty stories about this family’s abilities with words over the past twenty years. I kept returning to the patriarch, King William Adams, who was born a slave, freed, raised a dozen children in Pacific and died in 1939, with his granddaughter Ella Adams Villery Miller at his bedside.

“He talked all the time,” Ella said.

In my stories, I kept repeating the phrase that King Adams left his descendants with a legacy of language.

And here comes Prentice, a fifth-generation Adams family member who had been chosen by the family to talk about his grandmother’s life.

If you’ve never been to a Black funeral you should know something about this assignment he was given. For Black people a funeral is not about the end of anything. It’s called a “homegoing.” It’s about an individual who is about to reap the rewards of a life well lived. There is way more laughter than tears and Marie Adam’s funeral was a smorgasbord of rich family stories of her life and legend.

Of course, Prentice was preaching to the choir. The room at Bell Funeral Home was filled with her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and myriad nieces and nephews.

Her great nephew Elder Derrick Emerson had come up from Marie’s home state of Tennessee to lead the homegoing service.

It fell to Prentice, to fill this chapter of Adams family life. He chose the family tradition to honor his grandmother’s life with storytelling.

Marie had played the role of both his mother and grandmother. When he was an infant, his mother Sandra Adams, who was in Tennessee at the time and struggling, called her mother, Marie, to ask for help with her infant son. Marie drove to Tennessee, picked up Prentice took him to her house in Pacific, where he stayed until he went away to college in 1988.

Marie was the wife and business partner of the late Udell Adams. They operated a waste hauling business for the City of Pacific. Udell organized the operations of the company and Marie managed the business. She also managed the family. Marie had seven children: James, Samuel and Nelvin Cawley, Sandra Adams, Saundra Adams Jarmon, Herbert Adams and Robyn Adams Pruitt.

She knew how she wanted her children and grandchildren to manage their lives. She could be tough. But could also be as canny as an illusionist in persuading a growing brood to stay on the straight and narrow.

In one of life’s lessons for her children, she bought a little green house on the south side of town, which she sold to individual members of the family when they were ready for a home of their own. When they were ready to move up to a better house, she bought it back. 

“She did this over and over again,” Prentice said. “She sold the little green house to my brother Corey for $4,000. I don’t remember the exact year.”

“Then there was that day we were sitting on her front porch and Corey was bemoaning the money problems he was having. After listening and nodding for a while, she said there was one way she could help, she would buy back the green house. She offered him $1,800.”

“This was the house she sold him for $4,000,” Prentice said. “Corey agreed to the sale. She went inside and wrote him a check for $1,800.” 

“I think it was my brother’s first experience in flipping houses. And today, he has a successful real estate business,” Prentice said.

Corey operates a real estate business in St. Louis County where owns rental properties and buys and sells residential and commercial properties.

Sometimes Marie wasn’t so direct. There was the story of goat milk, which she introduced to the family as being good for their health. Her son Herbert and daughter Robyn rebelled. There was no way they were going to drink any goat milk. She ignored their protest.

A few days later for breakfast Marie served up a huge pot of (probably) oatmeal, which was the most delicious the Adams kids had ever tasted. They gobbled it up and headed off to school. That afternoon when the school bus stopped in front of the Adams’ house to let Sandra, Saundra, Herbert and Robyn out, as the bus door opened their father Udell stepped up onto the bus, looked at his startled kids and said, “Ba-a-a-a.” They knew that meant Marie had put one over on them. They had consumed goat milk.

Marie’s legacy, Prentice said, was the life lessons that she had given her children and grandchildren, most of whom were in the room. If her legacy could be summed up in one word, the word would be determination. 

“It’s in my DNA. I am determined,” he said. “If you’re in her direct line, it’s in your DNA. You may not know it yet, but it will kick in and when it does, you’ll know that it came from her.”

He saved a favorite personal lesson for last. Marie always had flowers all around her house and as a teen it was Prentice’s job to pull the weeds out of the flower beds.

On one occasion he was in a hurry to go out with his friends. He grabbed the bulk of the weeds, flung them into the yard and said he was finished. Marie looked at the half-baked job and shook her head. She recited a little poem that sent the penitent Prentice back to clean up his mess. “I want to end with this because it’s the thing I most remember about her,”  Prentice said.

After reciting the first line of the poem, a chorus of voices around the room joined the recitation.

If a task has once begun – Never leave it til its done – Be the labor great or small – Do it well or not at all.

“Marie Adams lived her life well,” he said.

Prentice and his wife Angeline, whom he met in Cincinnati, recently relocated to Houston, Texas.