In Profile: Uncle Clarence

Uncle Clarence, my grandmother's foster brother, was the ninth child of John Archie and Sadie Mae Goodson DeRamus--and one of the many, many children that they helped to rear. Not actually my grandmother's brother, Uncle Clarence my great-grandmother's nephew, my grandmother's first cousin. His mother, Betty, died during her labor with him. She had been an undertaker and schoolteacher in Kentucky and the doctor's advised her that her work as an undertaker would not give her an easy pregnancy. When she died, they sent Uncle Clarence, sill a newborn, to my great-great grandmother, as she had the child closest to his age, my Aunt Sadie being only just a couple of months older than him. They reared him in their home til he was fifteen years old when he ran away and joined the military, giving a false age. He never felt too comfortable I believe, as certain of the Deramus children(and I can guess which ones) would always pester him about not really being one of them.

Uncle Clarence would always come around, showing up at my grandmother's house late in the night. He went for bad, dealing in all sorts of gangster business--and he and my mother used to have kncokout-arguments when he would show up at my grandmother's house and she would be there. One time he came there, and he brought with him a suitcase full of money--and made the mistake of showing it to my mother. My mother told him that he and his suitcase full of money had to get out of her mother's house immediately. he now lives in south Alabama, sick, but still trying to run for bad.