Theodore M. Berry, Faith Berry, Johnnie Mae Newton Berry and Gail Berry
In these blog posts, it is my goal to write not only about what Berry accomplished in his lifetime but also about who he was as a human being. As I go through the collection, I read articles about his work, his correspondence, and his impassioned speeches; I look at photos of him wearing that huge, unself-conscious grin and I feel like I know what sort of person he was – a true humanitarian with an unrivaled sense of fairness and enough intelligence, generosity and energy to devote his life to fighting for the rights of those who were unable to fight for themselves. I feel Berry’s own special brand of goodness seep through the paper, yet I find it difficult to express to my readers.
This is why I am so grateful to Gail Berry West for contacting me. She is the middle child in the Berry family and, beyond being a lovely person, is extremely enthusiastic about the project. In our correspondence she has related to me a few very telling anecdotes about her father and has kindly given me permission to share with you.
“When he died, he laid in ‘state’ at City Hall. All our family greeted the individuals who had come to pass by his coffin. If we had one person come by to greet us saying ‘your father took my case and never charged me,’ there must have been over 30 to 40 people who said the same thing. He truly cared about his clients and many were too poor to pay him. One particular client I remember well. On Christmas Eve one year, our father said to my sister and me, to pick out all our toys that we no longer wanted and lets wrap them for some children of a client who had no money to buy her children Christmas presents. We went that night to where the client lived. I remember it vividly that it was a small room with a pot belly stove in the corner and one small light in the room which showed us there were about 5 children all sleeping side to side across the bed (not the normal way one sleeps), but the length of the bed so they could all have possibly more room. As we entered the room and laid out the presents, the client was crying and thanking my father profusely. As you can tell, this made a big impression on us as little girls that our father was a most caring man. Our mother nicknamed him Santa Claus from then on and she was as always as generous as he was in giving back to those who had less than we did. He knew firsthand how difficult it was for so many to climb out of the box of poverty.”
Berry playing with his young son, Theodore Newton Berry
Being born into poverty really did play a principal role in Berry’s life. If you’ve been following these blog posts since the start, you’ll know something of Berry’s accomplishments during his adult life. But in order to better understand his actions and why he chose the paths that he did, it is important to go back to the beginning of his life. He was born in Maysville, Kentucky in 1905. He is quoted in a 1973 issue of the Cincinnati Post as saying that his mother, a deaf-mute laundress who knew only her home-grown form of sign language, was “taken advantage of by a former employer,” a white farmer. Berry never knew his father as a child, and though Cincinnati Magazine gives an account of Berry having once met his father as an adult, the man who helped bring him into the world told his son that the issue “was settled a long time ago” when he gave Theodore’s maternal grandmother two hogs. The relationship was left at that. Because his mother had very little support, Berry spent much of his childhood in foster homes and worked delivering newspapers, shining shoes and shoveling coal while not working on his studies. When Gail later asked what made him work so hard when he had no one in his life to look to for help or encouragement, he said “I always wanted a house with a shower.” It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep young Berry going. These are the very humble beginnings which shaped the statesman that Berry became and whom Gail, Faith and Ted will always know as “Dad.”
In 2010, the University of Cincinnati Libraries received a $61,287 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the Archives and Records Administration to fully process the Theodore M. Berry Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library. All information and opinions published on the Berry project website and in the blog entries are those of the individuals involved in the grant project and do not reflect those of the National Archives and Records Administration. We gratefully acknowledge the support of NARA.
