On page 24 of Gail Milissa Grant’s beautiful new memoir At the Elbows of My Elders, there is a letter from her paternal grandfather, William S. Grant, to her grandmother, Elizabeth Holliday, written on the letterhead of the Southern Hotel. It’s dated Aug. 27, 1896.
It reads, “My one true love: I have not seen you for a long time and it seems almost impossible for me to get a glimpse of you any more. Every time I have an engagement I am compelled to stay on watch, I would have come out the other night but two of the boys were discharged, consequently I had to remain on the late watch, but dear I want to see you very much indeed. I must see you for I love you so much Lizzie each day and hour my love grows stronger.”
This hand-written letter in flowing cursive from a young black man to his beloved opens the main storyline of African-American life, from the landing at Jamestown on Sept. 5, 1619 to Millisa Grant’s reading and presentation of her memoir at the Missouri History Museum and Left Bank Books on October 19 and 20, 2008.
This poignant and plaintive letter has the same human motive that every letter written from a young man to a young woman has ever had: the need to be with the other and the will to make that need real. We call that expression love.
Throughout the book, which was published by the Missouri Historical Society, there is story upon story detailing Milissa Grant’s complex relationship with her family. The elders are everywhere, manipulating the system, finding success (social, economic and political), leaving instruction for Milissa and her generation. At the core of these relationships are her brother, mother and father. At the inner core is the towering figure of her dad, David Grant.
Beyond the stories, relationships and instruction is the legacy of a deeper ethos. That legacy is love.
As I sat in the audience and listened to the presentations at the museum and at the book store, I felt the measured, deliberate revelation of how much she loves her people.
Milissa Grant knows how to tell a story. There is a kind of elemental rapture in her voice when she begins to reflect on both the mundane and outrageous accomplishments of the clan that built the foundation upon which she now stands. The stories of her father’s political accomplishments in the staunchly segregated St. Louis of the 1930s through 1960s cannot help but make your chest swell. David Grant functioned at an incredibly high level of reality when that word carried life and death connotations. And he did it with class and style.
Speaking of style, check out the impeccably dressed Dave in every picture of him in the book. He’s always looking good. He was a giant in an era of giants.
At the elbow of Milissa
I sat and talked with the Milissa for about 20 minutes after her talk at Left Bank Books. Since we are old friends (I’ve known her since 1969), our conversation consisted of fond remembrances and more serious fare. I asked her about her current life and plans for the future, both personal and literary.
“As you know, I’ve been living in Rome for seven years,” she said.
“I retired from the U. S. State Department in 2001. I moved to Rome immediately n for love and marriage.”
Her husband, Gaetano Castelli, is an accomplished painter and one of the finest TV and film set designers and scenographers in Italy.
“I started the project in 1997, got sidetracked a little bit n I moved to Italy, people died, people got sick. So it took me a little longer to do the book,” she said.
“But, now that the book is done, I always had in the back of my mind that if this book did well I’d perhaps do a cookbook called At the Table with My Elders. I have lots of old recipes from my mother and my grandmother. I thought about doing a cookbook; one side of the page would have the traditional recipe and the other side would have a ‘lite’ recipe because, you know, those traditional ones will kill you.”
I asked her if she was surprised by the interest the book had generated and what appears to be the exquisite timing of its release.
“I couldn’t have planned it at a better moment. It really wasn’t planned at all. It feels like divine order. It’s just the right time for this book to come out,” she said.
“The History Museum people told me that Sunday’s turnout was the largest they’ve had for a local author. They sold a lot of books. They were very happy. I’m thrilled. We’ll see what happens. I’m thrilled that Black Renaissance / Renaissance Noire (edited by St. Louis native Quincy Troupe at NYU), is going to be excerpting portions of the book.”
I finally asked her why her father n the center of the memoir, and a towering figure in black and white St. Louis n is not really well known. In my own mind, because I knew him well, he was the equal to Gilbert Lindsay in Los Angeles, Percy Sutton in New York and C.L. Franklin in Detroit n Aretha’s daddy n as a community anchor. He was a man who could command other men and mentored many of the brightest legal and political minds of the generation that followed his own.
Milissa said, “If I had a penny for every time a person said to me, ‘I don’t think your father got the proper recognition,’ I would certainly be a rich woman today. My father was not a big self-promoter, and he had great integrity and great honor. Sometimes those things don’t get honored or recognized.”
