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[Back to index of April 2007 articles] ‘Miss Kitty’ served as a mother to many By Meg Bryant If asked to sum up her life in one word, Catherine “Kitty” A. Tomes Pinkney, a member of St. Thomas’, Croom, would tell you it has been “joyful.”
Never mind that she grew up in foster care in a racially-segregated rural community where the prospects for young African-American girls rarely exceeded working in somebody else’s home. Miss Kitty, as she is affectionately known, was determined to flourish, and to help others flourish, too. Over the years, she applied her religious faith, a positive attitude and a penchant for hard work to meeting the needs of others, especially children. She served as a foster parent to 23 children, raising several of them from infancy to adulthood. At 95, Miss Kitty’s enormous capacity for caring has been recognized by the Virginia Theological Seminary, which named her a recipient of the eighth annual Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans award. The award – named for an Episcopal laywoman, philanthropist and friend of the seminary – is given to an Episcopal layperson (or laypersons) who has “given leadership and unique witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” “I asked God for joy and peace in this life, for happiness and everything that is bright, and I found joy and peace in doing everything that I did,” Miss Kitty says, with a smile. Along the way, she did whatever she could to brighten other lives as well.
Born in Washington, D.C., in 1912, Miss Kitty arrived at the two-room Croom Settlement School at the age of 13, as a ward of the state. The school, started in the late 1800s as an outreach of St. Thomas’, took in African-American girls from urban neighborhoods, particularly D.C., and attempted to prepare them for a better life, explains St. Thomas’ historian and senior warden Franklin Robinson. There she shared a dormitory with eight other girls and learned “to cook, to clean, to sew and to do each thing that had to be done in housekeeping,” she recalls. She also formed a close bond with the school’s principal, Rachel Henry, and stayed on as staff at the school after finishing high school. On Sundays, the girls worshipped at St. Simon’s Mission, an African-American parochial mission founded in 1896 by the sisters of St. Thomas’ then-rector, the Rev. Francis P. Willes. It was during weekly vesper meetings that she met her husband, George Pinkney, a local sharecropper, with whom she had three children. When the Croom Settlement School closed in the 1950s, Miss Kitty decided that she could raise children “a different way,” according to St. Thomas’ rector, the Rev. Hugh Brown. She and her husband left the farm and moved into one of the buildings of the old school, and took on their first group of foster children – a family of five, plus an infant and 2-year-old boy. The latter two, Paul and Jimmy, stayed all the way through high school. “They still call me Mom” and call and visit, as do many of her foster children, says Miss Kitty. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson named her Foster Parent of the Year. During those years, Miss Kitty worked as a staff member at the Edgemeade Rehabilitation Center for Young Men, starting in the laundry and then caring for the younger boys. “I would sew for them and clean the dormitory, clean the windows, do all of that and take care of them.” She also baked a cake and would throw “a little party” for each boy’s birthday, she says. Her dedication and hard work did not go unnoticed. The head of the center promoted her to teacher’s aide, giving her time off during the summers to work as a housemother at Camp Croom. She retired in 1996, after 30 years at Edgemeade. “An amazing woman,” says Brown. “She breathes compassion and mercy and justice.” He also calls her “one of the great voices for racial reconciliation” in southern Maryland. When St. Simon’s Church closed in the late 1960s, following the start of integration, Miss Kitty was the first member of St. Simon’s to cross the color barrier and begin attending St. Thomas’ regularly, Brown says. Not wanting to see St. Simon’s closed, Miss Kitty says she resisted going to St. Thomas’ for several years after the church opened its doors to African-Americans in 1964. Then one Sunday, while making bread, “I heard the church bell ring, and it seemed to put so much feeling into my heart,” she recalls. “I said to myself, Kitty, you’ve always been a churchgoer. Why aren’t you in church?” The next week she donned her Sunday best and a hat and marched into St. Thomas’. Others soon followed, and today St. Thomas’ congregation is an even blend of blacks and whites. “She became one of the key figures at St. Thomas’ and really because of her witness and example more African-American families began to join,” Brown says. According to Brown, the early days of the church’s integration were difficult at times. Some members opposed blacks joining the congregation, and there was resistance to including them in the communion. Through it all, Miss Kitty persisted. Before long, she was not only taking communion but also organizing church dinners and breakfasts and taking care of children of families attending St. Thomas. “She is just very much a doer,” says Robinson, who calls Miss Kitty “the heart of the parish.” In addition to her faithful church attendance, she could always be counted on to help with church projects and operations, he says. Reflecting on her life and the changes she has seen, Miss Kitty again looks for the silver lining. “So many people have asked me about the difference of the changing of the races. I could never, really never think of anything at all that I suffered through all those trials and tribulations. I was kind to everybody and everybody was kind to me,” she says. In fact, Miss Kitty has spent her life wrapping her arms around everyone she meets, says Brown. “When Jesus says, ‘By your fruits you will know them,’ we definitely think of Miss Kitty. Nothing but the fruits of kindness, love and service.” [Back to index of April 2007 articles]
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