Our Auntie Rosa by Sheila McCauley Keys

Author:Sheila McCauley Keys
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

To Be Continued

She was just getting home from Japan.

Japan.

Auntie Rosa was truly loved worldwide. She had flown all the way there to receive an honorary degree sometime around 1994. I admired her so much, and I was proud that people all the way on the other side of the globe were still recognizing her importance after so many decades. My children and my siblings’ children all grew up knowing the importance of the civil rights movement and the role Auntie Rosa played in it. What was so great for our younger generation of McCauleys was that she was still alive and well enough for them to touch and connect with her. They didn’t have to imagine Auntie Rosa based on old, fuzzy newsreel images or photos in their classroom textbooks.

But I had a concern. She was making frequent trips, sometimes long ones like this visit to Japan had been, and I wondered if she should keep going at this pace. She was in her early eighties now, a time when even the healthiest people who live that long start taking it easy. I knew she still had a passion for working and she wasn’t ready to become a shut-in or one of those senior citizens who didn’t go anywhere except church, and I could respect that, but I felt like I should tell her my thoughts. It had been on my mind for a while, so that’s what I did.

When Auntie Rosa called to tell me she had made it home, I let her know I would be stopping by to see her in a few days. Once I was able to sit with her in person, I was surprised to hear her say she was getting ready to leave town again.

“Auntie Rosa,” I said, “don’t you think it’s time to start slowing down a little?”

We didn’t really second-guess her decisions, but I had only asked the question out of love. It was important that I try to show the same interest in her well-being that she had always shown in mine, in all of ours. Auntie Rosa looked at me, and I could tell my thought had probably never crossed her mind.

“I’m going to do this until I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “There’s still a lot to do, especially for the youth, and I will as long as I can.”

The tone of her response felt so firm, I knew it was the end of the conversation. And things went just the way she said they would. Unfortunately, it wasn’t too much longer before her failing health did force Auntie Rosa to slow down, but in the few years that she managed to keep traveling, her appearances included some major ones. In 1996, she went to Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and three years later, the Congressional Gold Medal.

“This medal is encouragement for all of us to continue until all have rights,” she told the audience of about 650 people.

There, at age eighty-six, she was

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