Check out this old school
leader with his blessed bride ...
Married 69 years, Richmond Heights couple still cooks on 1940s stove
BY BEA L. HINES
Queen Ester Armstrong cooks on a 64-year-old O'Keefe and Merritt gas stove as her husband Samuel D. Armstrong Sr. stands by, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014, at their home in Richmond Heights. DANIEL BOCK
Sam Armstrong says that when he moved his young family into the Liberty Square Housing Projects in the 1940s, “I told myself … when I move from this project, I will have my own house.”
But in those days, for many blacks, owning their own home was a far-fetched dream. Armstrong kept on dreaming. “Then, Frank Martin decided to build houses for black veterans. I went down in Richmond Heights to look at the homes, and that did it. We paid $25 down and waited until they built our house.”
A new house meant new appliances and furniture. Armstrong and his wife, Queen Esther, didn’t know how they were going to furnish the new home with all the things they would need.
One day, while listening to the radio, there was a
Name That Tune contest going on a local station. Armstrong won and asked the sponsors to keep his new stove until the house was finished being built. They did.
That was 64 years ago. Today, the stove still works, just as it did more than six decades ago, Queen Esther said.
Armstrong will celebrate his 90th birthday on Saturday. And the five Armstrong children, who range in age from 68 to 58, will cook his birthday dinner on that stove.
On Thanksgiving, the 64-year-old stove will show what it can do as the family prepares a lavish dinner, complete with roasted turkey and “all the trimmings,” Queen Esther said.
She mentioned the trimmings: collard greens, mac and cheese, candied yams, corn on the cob, okra and tomatoes, pigeon peas and rice, baked ham.
“Ham, too?” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Everybody knows you need more than one meat at Thanksgiving.” My mouth started to water, as she went on to mention the sweet potato pies and homemade pound cakes for dessert.
“Everything will be cooked on my stove, but I won’t be working this year. I’ve cooked so much over the years, I’m letting the children do the cooking this year,” said Queen Esther, 87.
Queen Esther said the stove works “just like it did when it was new. It never had a major breakdown — just a few adjustments here and there over the years.”
The Armstrongs have been married 69 years. “It was God who has kept us all these years,” Queen Esther said. “I still drive and I am a prayer warrior in my church and serve on a lot of the boards in the church, including the mothers board. My husband still sings in the choir.”
“I give God the thanks and glory for our life together. We weren’t professional people — I was a school secretary and my husband was a truck driver — but all our children finished college.”
Queen Esther and Sam Armstrong have more than 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “We just thank God for all he has done,” Queen Esther Armstrong said.
Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...nity-voices/article4020832.html#storylink=cpy
