HOWARD FAMILY REUNION - DETROIT, MI 1986

The family in Detroit had planned a great affair, working for months as a committee to make sure everyone enjoyed themselves. They raised money to help defray some of the costs of the reunion for those family members driving in from elsewhere.

We had a Friday-night gathering complete with a DJ and music, and dancing. Adults whirled each other around the floor while others watched timidly from their tables. Toddlers waddled to the music, not caring who was watching them.

We were told on Friday night that we had a choice of activities on Saturday: go over to Canada, go to a black festival in downtown Detroit or go to an amusement park.

On Saturday, the out-of-towners were given tickets for the Detroit lottery, and some even bought their own. We were all back by 7 p.m., sitting in front of the television hoping our numbers would come up. They didn’t.

Our rooms in the hotel were near the pool area, and some family members – especially Walter Howard of Cincinnati, son of Walter G. Howard, son of Alonzo, spent plenty of time in it.

On Saturday, the family from Macon decided to go to Canada. Rebecca and her family went into downtown Detroit.

Before we went to Canada, we exchanged our U.S. dollars for Canadian dollars to pay for souvenirs, but we found that we could easily have used American money.

We entered Canada via the Detroit-Windson Tunnel. From where we stood in Windsor, Canada, we could look across the Detroit River into Detroit. The view was extraordinary. But because we were so close to the city, Canada didn’t feel like a different place. It felt like Detroit.

At one Canadian store that sold glassware and china, several of us ventured in, wearing our Howard Family Reunion T-shirts. As Ella Mae Haynes, “play-daughter” of Abbie Lee Howard, daughter of Alonzo, eyed china patterns, the white female clerk began asking her questions about the T-shirts. The woman was amazed to hear that we get together every year for a reunion. It was something new and mysterious to her. She was very much impressed.  

Several family members bought souvenirs, and by the time the day ended, we all were starved. We stopped by a corner restaurant for hotdogs and ate them on the way back to Detroit. As we approached the bridge that would take us across the river, Lonnie Mae Slocumb, daughter of Alonzo, and Abbie Lee started to get jumpy, saying incredulously, “We have to cross that bridge?” Being told that the answer was yes, I believe they closed their eyes – tightly.

On Sunday morning, we went to the church of Rev. Walter L. Howard Sr., son of Guss Howard, and heard a moving sermon by him.

At Sunday’s banquet, a friend of Kenneth Clark’s was the featured speaker, and he talked about the importance of family and the significance of family reunions. Family members from various cities brought greetings. Clark is the son of Gussie Clark, daughter of Guss.

Later that night, Jackie Green, daughter of Bertha Green Durrett, daughter of Guss, took Christine and Sherry Howard, daughters of Abbie, daughter of Alonzo, and their play-sister Ella Haynes on a tour of Detroit. 

She drove them to the old Motown Studios building, the place where the most important soul sounds of the 1960s were molded, where Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and the Supremes and the Temptation got their start. It was a place Ella was dying to see.

Jackie stopped the car, they walked up the narrow walkway to the dark building and peered inside. The moon was brilliant, like a nightlight in a dark room, and they could see inside the place well. There were posters of some of the stars on the walls. When Ella saw the smallness of the building, which in no way hinted at its significance in music history, she was disappointed.

Jackie also showed them Marvin Gaye’s first home in Detroit – a modest ranch-style home. She wanted to show them Aretha Franklin’s house, but it was late and Ella and Chris had fallen asleep (or were falling) asleep.

Berry Gordon’s Motown studios in Detroit, where magic was made. Photo from detroit.curbed.com.