The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 65

Bob and Ray Save the Uh Uh Day if I Ron XfjzJ Wiggins my duty to "Explain your purposes?" educate the public. Not that we have anything against incomplete thoughts, but why finish a sentence when you can get someone else to, to, to, uh, to, uh "Finish it for you?" complete the thought. Let's face it, the world is full of people who can get a good, snappy sentence under way and going somewhere only to get sidetracked off on ah, sidetracked on to go off on a "Tangent." an aimless digression to the point where they get so hopelessly mixed up and bogged down that they entirely lose their, I miss the Bob and Ray radio show. Something someone said over lunch the other day put me in mind of the beloved comedians. A friend was complaining about somebody's mother, a dear woman apparently, but a slow talker.

"You keep trying to hurry her up. I find myself finishing sentences for her." Suddenly, I thought of my radio heroes. I knew exactly what they would do with such a concept and how they would handle it. Come along if you want to. The Bob and Ray Show "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to 'Faces in the I'm Bob Elliot and today we'll be talking to Elwood R.

Nightingale, president of lose their their "Train of thought?" the thread of their conversation." "Well-, this is fascinating Mr. Nightingale, if slightly exasperating. Tell me, what is the divorce rate among members of the League of People Who Rarely Finish Their Sentences?" "Ninety percent." "I suppose it could be worse." "It is worse. The homicide rate is 10 percent. Some of our members not only can't finish a sentence, they talk so slowly that perfect strangers will seize them "By the throat and shake them?" "How did you guess? But it isn't really all as that is, you can still communicate even if well, look at the Watergate tapes.

Nixon and Haldeman hardly ever spoke in complete that is, they certainly were understood well enough to get into a peck of I think you sense what I'm "Indeed, I get your point, Mr. Nightin- gale, and believe me, I hope that the next sentence you complete is 10 to 20 in San Quentin. Thank you for appearing on 'Faces in the News' and now this is Bob Elliot saying so long, and write if you get work "And I'm Ray Goulding saying, hang by your thumbs." well, suppose you tell us in your own words, Mr. Nightingale." "Certainly. As president of the League of People Who Rarely Finish Their Sentences, it is my duty to uh, that is, uh, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1980 SECTION The Post ''V A i i IT 1 1 The Final Injustice Handmade gravestone in Evergreen Cemetery s.

Nut, -s -Jif ftTKa" Li 1L 1 nr i i 1 1 1 1. 1 a i ...1 Tom Wilkins' whole family is buried at Evergreen including his niece, who was reburied four years ago after vandals broke into her crypt generosity sent 10 needy black children, including Miss Moore, to college many years ago. Mickens owned 10 of the quaint little Afromobiles, as the tourists called them. They were never called that by the black community. Even today they refer to them as wheelchairs.

To the Mickens home came all the important people of Miss Moore's race. Ralph Bunche slept there and so did Mary Bethune, adviser to four different presidents. A. Philip Randolph stayed, as did Howard Thruman. "We opened our home to them," Mrs.

Mickens said, "because in those days we couldn't stay in any of the hotels. People used to call us up from all over the country and ask for people to stay. We never turned them down and we never took a cent for it." Mickens bought 'the property on which his widow Turn to EVERGREEN, C4 is the man whose strong black legs ped al the Afromo-bile in which they ride. That's the way it usually is in history. But as Alice Moore, a retired West Palm Beach schoolteacher, pointed out, there are others buried there who have a rightful place in history West Palm Beach's history and they too are forgotten beneath the weeds.

Buried there is Dr. T. Leroy Jefferson, the city's first black doctor; J.W. Mickens, the first principal of Industrial High School, the city's segregated school, and Dr. Tom Sawyer, Dade County's first black physician and father of the late Gwen Cherry, the first black woman to be elected to the Florida House of Representatives.

Recently, Miss Moore agreed to point out the graves of some of these pioneers and community leaders. She knew many of them as a child growing up in the home of Haley and Alice Mickens, a couple whose So unless you are a visitor here, Evergreen will not be an eyesore to you. Few white people come here. Why should they? Evergreen, founded by an association of black men in 1916, is a relic of segregation. From 1916 until 1966, when the city-owned Woodlawn was integrated, it was the only place blacks could bury their dead.

History does not record the majority of people who rest beneath Evergreen's parched weeds and tangled vines. They were people of ways, not means, and though the fruit of their labor lives on, their names are forgotten. We think of Henry Flagler when we see pictures of the Royal Poinciana not Dimmie A. Wilkins, whose strong black hands pounded the nails in the world's largest frame building. The names of white visitors are recorded for posterity on the old Palm Beach photographs.

Anonymous By Shari Spires Pol Staff Wriur Some people have called Evergreen Cemetery an eyesore. But the truth is, you cannot see this forgotten field in the heart of West Palm Beach without making a special point of finding it. There's only one road leading in and it's just a small shell path tucked away at the rear of a lumber yard off Rosemary Avenue. The unmarked entrance opens to about 9 acres of tombstones and above-the-ground burial vaults, completely surrounded by development. The northern edge abuts the tree-shaded backyards of a neighborhood.

The east side is flanked by a railroad track and a row of businesses beyond. On the west, the hillside drops off to a block of businesses built at the base. -V 7y lJ Lj iVfl Ml Jhj fir t'y Mi tt Alice AAoore (above) remembers the people of Palm Beach County's past who are burled at Evergreen Cemetery, now overgrown with weeds and scarred by the work of vandals (right). I $tM PMW by SmpImh Criwlt.