Selma Mackel Washington

Published 12:01 am Saturday, August 23, 2014

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June 3, 1919 – Aug. 14, 2014

NATCHEZ — Services for Selma M. Washington, 95, who died peacefully Thursday, Aug. 14, 2014, at the home of her daughter, Gleevia A. Wartts, in St. Louis, will be at 11 a.m. today at Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Burial will be at 10 a.m. Monday at the Natchez National Cemetery under the direction of Robert D. Mackel and Sons Funeral Home.

Visitation will from 10 a.m. until service time today at the church.

Until her death at the age of 95, she held the distinction of being the oldest living member of the entire Mackel family.

The third of eight children of Robert D. Mackel Jr. and Selma Dent Mackel, Selma Mae Mackel was born in Natchez, June 3, 1919. Two sisters, Geraldine and Esther, died in infancy,while four of her five adult siblings, Robert, Louis, Edward and Charlotte, preceded her in death, as well.

Mrs. Washington was a more than 40-year resident of Vidalia, where she retired following decades of teaching and counseling in the Concordia Parish School System. Throughout her career, she earned the high regard and sincere affection of students and colleagues alike.

In her profession, Mrs. Washington was known to be hardworking, caring, capable and creative. Teaching Home Economics for years at Concordia Parish Training School before transitioning in the late 1960s to guidance counseling, her influence went beyond both the subject matter she taught and the boundaries of the classroom. She made a point to encourage her students to lift their sights above mediocrity, and to believe that they could achieve excellence and success.

Once or twice a year, for example, Mrs. Washington would arrange for small groups of carefully chosen young ladies from her high school classes to participate in special one or two-day workshops, (called “short courses”) hosted at nearby college campuses like Southern University in Baton Rouge. She would personally drive her students to the campus, chaperone them for the entire time they were there, and then drive them back, delivering them safely to their individual homes once the activities were over.

By giving her students the opportunity to experience being on an actual college campus, as well as the chance to room together in a real college dorm for a day or so, she succeeded in introducing them to the notion that they could one day be college students themselves. Years later, some of these students returned to thank her for opening their eyes to a larger world and stretching the limits of their expectations.

Mrs. Washington’s renowned creativity found countless avenues of expression. She vowed that when she retired and had more time, she would make even more lovely things, and true to her word, she did. She saw creative possibilities in ordinary objects—toothpicks, peanuts in the shell, bottle caps, pipe cleaners—and enjoyed transforming them into art, and then displaying them in her home, or giving them to others as gifts.

Her mother had taught her to crochet, embroider, do needlepoint, and the like, and she used these skills to create beautiful one-of-a-kind gifts for her children and grandchildren. Each of her seven grandchildren, for example, was presented, as a youngster, with a custom-designed crocheted afghan, which each continues to treasure, though all are now full grown adults. She also enjoyed adding to her repertoire of skills, trying her hand at macramé, origami, candle making, soap sculpture. The list goes on and on.

As a girl of 12, Selma Mae joined Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church, choosing to sit, even after she was grown, in the same section where her dear mother had always sat and worshipped. Years later, unable to attend the services because of impaired mobility, she looked forward to receiving communion at home from her pastor, and joining him in praying and singing a familiar hymn or two.

Progressing steadily through school, Mae graduated in 1937 from Brumfield High School in Natchez, and from Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, in 1941. Though trained in home economics, she began her career by teaching at the elementary level for one year each at Lampton School in Columbus and Prince Street School in Natchez.

The year was now 1943. Gathering with others at the Natchez National Cemetery to celebrate Memorial Day, the eligible Miss Mackel could not have guessed that in that very place and on that very day, she would meet her future husband. She noticed the stir among the other young women present, following a speech given by an intelligent-sounding young man, impressive in his air force uniform. Vaguely curious, she learned that her parents already knew the gentleman, a Mr. Alexander W. Washington; that he had even visited in their home on several occasions; and that they were quite keen to introduce her to him.

A long distance courtship followed, with letters flowing back and forth between them, since he had to return to his base in Michigan. Soon, he sent word that on Sept. 7, 1943, he would be coming back to Natchez “to marry and carry her away.” And so he did. (For years to come, her sisters-in-law teased her good-naturedly about how she had floated around the house blissfully repeating the phrase over and over.)

A series of military transfers lay ahead, and life was far from easy for the newly married Mrs. Washington. She went first with her husband to Michigan; then he was sent briefly to Florida; next, he was deployed to Italy, not returning until late 1945. Together, they moved to Tuskegee Air Force Base, where Mrs. Washington worked as an elementary school substitute teacher. Before he learned that she was expecting their first child, a son, her husband was sent to New York. He was then sent to Ohio State, courtesy of the Air Force, to pursue a masters’ degree. Later, there was Denver; Columbus, Ohio; and San Antonio, Texas. A daughter had come along by this time, and Mrs. Washington left San Antonio, and went to Marksville, La., where she worked as a county agent in agriculture. Forced back to Vidalia by a bout of illness, she rejoiced when her husband retired from the military.

His dream, however, had always been to become a college professor. Coming from a small town, the best opportunities to pursue his ambitions proved to be elsewhere. As he chased the opportunities — Albany State; Alabama A & M; North Carolina A & T; Florida A & M; Alcorn College; Elizabeth City State Teachers College in North Carolina — they grappled with the challenge of how to achieve stability for their family.

They tried various strategies. At one point, their son, Alex Jr., lived with his father in Albany, Ga., and attended school there, while Mrs. Washington kept their daughter, Gleevia. In the summer and on major holidays, the family was always reunited. But even so, it was a challenging lifestyle, to be sure.

Though many knew Aunt Mae to be hardworking and capable, few knew the extent to which her life in those early years demanded that she be resourceful, versatile, and downright gritty, at times. Her children had many occasions to observe the way she rose to the occasion, whatever it might be.

From 1952-1955, for example, Mama taught at Knox School, a one-room school in rural Shaw, La., to which she drove weekly down a sometimes dusty, sometimes muddy, levee road. She taught all subjects at all grade levels to all the children in that community. Occasionally, during the drive, she would spot a rattlesnake on the road. Without so much as flinching, she would aim the car’s wheels toward the snake’s head and, after running over it with front and back wheels, she would shift quickly into reverse and back over it, repeating the process several times, just to make sure the job was done.

Similarly, because she was a woman driving alone with two young children, making a weekly trek to the country and back again to her home in Ferriday, at the end of the school week (she and her children roomed and boarded with a local family in the country during the school week), she learned to fix a flat as expertly as she could bake a melt-in-your-mouth lemon pie.

In that rustic setting, with its outdoor toilets, and wood-burning stoves, she not only taught, she prepared and served school meals, administered first-aid as needed, and occasionally faced the daunting task of cleaning a student up if he or she accidentally stepped in cow manure during recess. She was not a shrinking violet, by any means.

In the late 1960s, having been offered the position of full-time guidance counselor at Vidalia High School, and recognizing the need for further education, she enrolled at Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., earning a master’s degree in education, and graduating with distinction in 1969.

Because Aunt Mae went to such lengths to gather, organize and share family information, she gradually became the uncontested “go to” person when questions arose about the family tree, for example, or what went on in “the old days.” Delighting in the telling and preserving of anecdotes and family stories, she, along with her siblings, provided generous glimpses into the colorful day-to-day life on “Mackel Hill,” the family home-site on what was then Pine Street in Natchez.

In so doing, she opened a kind of window to the past, vividly bringing to life people, places, and events to which younger family members would not otherwise have been privy.

Additionally, she spent painstaking hours recording all that she knew about the various branches and members of the family, clarifying exactly how they were connected. She then made copies of her work, mailing them to relatives, so that others could reap the benefits of her diligence efforts. She was determined to do her part to actively foster a sense of connectedness between the generations going forward and the generations gone before. That she can no longer play that invaluable role is a profound loss for her family.

She is survived by one son, Alexander W. Washington Jr., M.D., and wife, Pamela, of Covington, La, ;one daughter, Gleevia A. Wartts of St. Louis; six grandsons, Jarrad A. Washington, amd wife, Angel, Christopher J. Washington and wife, Carrie, Anthony A. Washington, Alan J. Washington, Akili K. Wartts and wife, Camille, and Nile K. Wartts and wife, Stacie; one granddaughter, Naima A. Wartts; two great grandsons, Christopher John Washington Jr. and Mason James Washington; one brother, Walter B. Mackel Sr.; three sisters-in-law, Lucille, Dorothea, and Yvonne Mackel; and a number of extended family members and former students.

She will be sorely missed and lovingly remembered by her family forever.

There is a great grandchild on the way that mama will never meet. But let others rise up to do what she did. Let those who value her legacy, seek, as she did, to encourage connections between the generations going forward and the generations gone before. Let her loved ones fling open a window to the past, so that “Mrs. Washington,” “Mama,” “Granny,” “Selma Mae,” “Mae,” “Aunt Mae,” will be accorded the place of honor she so richly deserves in the hearts of generations yet to be born.