Carlsbad Native Reminisces on Nearly 100 Years

By Michael Bromka

Carlsbad’s Clementine Lewis, at age 97, with sweet-tempered silence, challenges any questioner. Seeking her story is like walking in the wee hours. Under streetlights, there’s a view—elsewhere darkness. Or perhaps life is postcards eight decades old, snippets vivid yet brief.

The widow of Reverend Columbus Lewis, Clementine is petite with an attentive, mirthful demeanor. She wants to say more. But what might the neighbors say?

There was hot-tempered June, who insisted Clementine use way too much starch when laundering curtains. Clementine, employed as the household cleaning girl, dutifully obeyed.

June’s mother later disparaged the drapes’ odd rawhide stiffness, “June, you should see them curtains!”

After her mother left, June furiously cussed out Clementine, who meekly bore such abuse in silence. Not to knuckle under might risk losing her job.

Work throughout her teens was standard for any Carlsbad non-wealthy African American girl in the 1940s. To boot, Clementine and her sister, Rena, shared caring for their maternal grandmother, Zelphia Williams Dickson. On alternate days, they each cleaned houses for 25¢ per hour in four-hour shifts. From her “New San Jose” neighborhood (just north of Kircher St.), two such shifts plus a commute on foot made her workday full.

If a girl wasn’t needed cleaning both morning and afternoon, she could enjoy one half-day at school. For Clementine, attending school three half-days per week was a scholastic luxury.

“I didn’t get to go to school like I should’ve. When the crops were ready, we had to quit school. We don’t even think about no school. After the crops were gathered, then we could go back to school.”

“Plowering” was manly work—when folks were watching. But Clementine’s Uncle Calvin felt achy. He taught her how to guide the team. If a car approached, Calvin jumped up and jogged over to appear on-task at the plow. But it was Clementine who plowed those fields. She giggles to recall, “Our team was mismatched. Great big mule, little bitty horse, girl on the straps to guide. I learned to plower straight.”

Clementine was born in Red River County near Clarksville, TX. When she was six, her mother, Edna Dickson White, died. Her brothers stayed with their father (Joe McKinley White 1896-1971). It was seen as fitting for the girls to go live with Aunt Dellie Billingsley Dickson and Uncle Calvin in Idabel, OK.

Thereafter, when Carlsbad built and expanded its airbase, many Black folks moved here to work. Clementine and her family arrived in 1942.

Of school, she recalls geography and especially math, which she was good at. She can’t recall reading particular literary authors, “Whoever was in the textbook.”

The segregated Black-only school was at the former site of the Furr’s Cafeteria on Pompa St. (west of Burger King, where TownePlace Marriott now stands). At the urging of Dr. Emitt Smith, she studied through to graduation.

Work in earnest continued in her late teens into early twenties when she married Columbus. Cooking, cleaning, and caring for her husband and children commenced to piggyback on her day labors. After the kids had grown and flown, she still worked into her early elder years and, at last, retired. (Then she un-retired. But let’s flashback to acquiring a husband and children.)

Columbus was divorced from his first wife, Margarett (Murray Lewis), who had borne him her first three children. She then remarried and bore subsequent children. With a full house herself, she was pleased when Columbus wed reliable young Clementine. She would help raise Margarett’s elder children.

One day, Berthena Williams, mother to Jessie Gates and grandma to our Carlsbad Municipal Judge Collis Johnson, conferred with Clementine and Columbus. Folks noticed they were doing well raising three kids. Would they take in a fourth?

Rodney, a fatherless four-year-old, was ready to be adopted from his own mother, who was overburdened with a subsequent younger toddler and infant. Adopting Rodney, Clementine’s became a household of six.

Columbus worked days for Eddy County as Courthouse custodian. Moonlighting also, he cleaned the dental office of Dr. Dale Harris. Evenings, the Rev. Columbus read many books, wrote sermons, and saw to the needs of his Church of God in Christ parishioners.

Dr. Dale’s wife, Laurie, had hired Clementine to clean their home—all in the family. Unlike abusive June, with Clementine, the Harrises “was kinda buddy-buddy.”

The first two decades of Clementine’s marriage, the 1950s and 1960s, brought progress nationwide for African Americans. Carlsbad saw no tumult. Clementine found scant time to read about activism elsewhere.

However, her home was a waystation for Texan Black church groups traveling to sing up in Albuquerque. A gracious hostess, she slept on the living room floor while guests occupied her bedroom. She recalls feeling exasperated one morning, gaining late access to her fresh underwear and church clothes.

Just as Clementine served the needs of employers and family, husband and pastor, the Rev. Columbus attended his flock of parishioners. The dawn-to-dusk toil of Clementine secured their home so that often, the Revered Lewis could venture out seeing to folks’ spiritual and logistical needs. If someone ailed, grieved, or even needed to be fetched home from El Paso, off went the Reverend. Clementine kept hearth and home intact.

Clementine’s beloved Columbus passed away at age 95 in 2009. By then, she had retired from domestic work, then un-retired to assist her “buddy-buddy” aging Dale and Laurie Harris. Dr. Harris died in 2016.

In Carlsbad, Clementine’s niece, Patricia, tends to her daily, in person or over the phone. Clementine also enjoys empathetic neighbors like David Lewis (no relation, yet another buddy-buddy).

Lifelong labor and care for others have brought Clementine security, comfort, and a reverential community of love richly deserved.