“When we get together to tell these stories, we tell the same stories every year, and no one gets tired of hearing it, honey. So many stories, we talk about growing up, like the, some of the stories that I talked about here, about what happened to Simon and myself, all those little funny stories of the family, it’s so important, because if we can’t do it in the wider community, at least you try to do in your own families. Maybe if I don’t have the answer, maybe my children might.”
– (Uncle) Deacon Charles Andrade
“We had a great landlord on Planet Street… Mr. Page, he was very, very nice to us. But no, it was the people from the redevelopment office that came to our house and told us that we had to move because they were going to do the house over and that ah, well, you can move back after we do it which we knew that was never going to happen because it would have been so expensive. So I said to him, I said, no, I said, I know we won’t be able to come back here, but well, you know, in the meantime, you can move to Chad Brown. I said, thank you very much, but no thank you. I said, I’m not moving my children into Chad Brown. Before I do that, I have lots of friends who own property, I will have a tent in the backyard before I move my kids into the Chad Brown projects. He wasn’t too happy about that, but hey.”
– Patricia Andrade (Aunt Pat Andrade)
“Who we are comes from who our parents were and their parents before them. To be able to go, to walk anywhere in your community, and go to anybody’s house, and you sit down and they’ll offer you something to eat. It comes about by living it as our parents lived it and their parents before them. This love that they had for each other, for us, and the respect that they
had for all people. That’s where it all comes from, and that’s who we are. That becomes part of who you are. When you’ve been privileged and blessed by being, growing up in a loving community, it just becomes part of who you are.
We don’t think we’re better than anyone else, but we also feel that no one is better than us.”
– (Uncle) Deacon Charles Andrade
