The street is called Brooks Village and it’s no exaggeration to say it was a small city unto itself. It was a productive location, as the owners grew fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as beautiful perennial flowers and foliage. The greatest products of them all, however, were the young people.
“The essence of her was that she was an advocate for children,” said Gail Brooks of Prince Frederick, recalling her late grandmother, Marjorie Cornelia Harrod Brooks.
The matriarch of the Brooks family was also the architect for the village.
When Marjorie Brooks was in her mid-30s, she and her husband Albert received some troubling news from the State Roads Commission. The family was going to lose their property to accommodate a road project.
According to Gail, her grandmother, who was a domestic worker for several prominent families who resided on Dares Beach Road, “went to Mr. Kenneth Buckler, who was a prominent landowner and said ‘I want to buy this piece of land.’ ” Buckler agreed to sell the parcel to her.
The tract is located just off Dares Beach Road, a few miles from the Chesapeake Bay.
“The story that she told was that they had been saving money,” said Gail. “She went home and got the down payment for the land.”
Marjorie and her husband, Albert D. Brooks, were quite industrious. Albert labored as a farmer, waterman and a mason. He and his five sons started Brooks Brothers, a masonry business.
In addition to domestic work, Marjorie also did farm work and washed dishes at a restaurant in the Twin Beach area. Both had their formal educations curtailed by the need for them to go to work to help support their families. The land purchase, said Gail, was clearly part of a vision.
“She envisioned that she wanted her family to live together,” said Gail. “They were some of the first black landowners in Calvert County.”
The Brookses had five sons and a daughter. When Marjorie’s sister, Emma, passed away at age 32, her eight children came to live with the Brooks family.
“My grandparents raised them,” said Gail. “It was the largest group of other children they took in. They were also raising other children.”
The extended family included two nephews, one whose father couldn’t afford to raise him and another whose mother moved to Washington, DC. The Brookses took the latter nephew in to have him raised in what they believed was a proper family setting.
“My grandparents believed that children should have a mother and father figure,” said Gail.
The Brookses also opened their home to provide foster care. “They probably raised 20 foster children,” said Gail, who called that “a conservative estimate.”
The number of foster children was so large because, “they never adopted one child from a family,” said Gail. “When Social Services would call on them they always took the whole family of children.”
Some of the foster children had mental challenges and some had been in trouble prior to coming to live with the Brooks family. The environment of Brooks Village “stabilized them,” said Gail. “Then they all went back to their homes.”
“She [Marjorie] embraced the concept that it takes a village to raise a child,” said Dana Jones of Sunderland. “People seek purpose in many ways. She was a change agent but she never sought the limelight.”
“She was a wonderful worker and was always cheerful,” said Carolyn Dowell Mohler, for whose family Marjorie worked for several years. “We felt like she was one of our family. Of course, we got to know her family and how proud she was of everyone of her children and grandchildren. She provided loving guidance to so many.”
Nevertheless, Albert and Marjorie Brooks received statewide and local recognition. During the 1970s, Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel presented the couple with a citation for their exemplary foster care. The Brookses were the first recipients of Calvert County’s “Maryland You Are Beautiful” Award in 1987.
Education was a priority in Brooks Village. “You were pushed to excel because you were a Brooks,” said Gail. “You knew that intellectually there was a certain expectation you had to achieve. You knew you had to be excellent. Everything they taught us was to make us better citizens for the world.”
“Everyone called her ‘Mama,’ ” said Ari Woldeab, Gail’s daughter, who today is the executive director of the Friends of the Library of Montgomery County. “She did everything from run the household, she contributed to the financial bottom line. She was a working woman. She was a nature lover, a Renaissance woman. She always mentioned to me how proud she was of me.”
“When kids came here on this land they didn’t want to leave,” Gail recalled. “If a kid came to visit here, they were going to stay. It was like these people were enchanted. They had the vision to see children needed a very strong male figure and a strong but soft woman figure in their lives. That was their way of teaching community—making a village.”
The Brookses’ determination that children get a proper education also manifested itself within the Calvert County community. For several years the Albert and Marjorie Brooks Scholarship Fund was awarded to deserving Calvert High School seniors. According to Gail, the recipients had to demonstrate “excellence in academics and a faith-based commitment to the community.”
“A lot of young people in Calvert County are successful today because of their help,” said Commissioners’ President Wilson H. Parran [D]. A county native, Parran recalled when he attended high school during the 1960s, obtaining any college scholarship in Calvert “didn’t seem possible.”
The Brooks family also extended their generosity to Plum Point United Methodist Church (UMC) in Huntingtown.
“We were founding members,” said Gail. “My grandmother did fund-raising for all the local black churches. She’d call people and get pledges for the churches.”
Marjorie was the driving force behind the annual Brooks Day Rally. “The fourth Sunday of every June our family is honored,” said Gail. The money raised for rally day is used for the churches’ building fund, Sunday school and scholarships.
Jones, who recalled mostly interacting with the Brooks family through their attendance at Plum Point UMC, was almost impossible to say no to.
“Certainly, by how she operated, she was living a good life and was a working example, people tend to want to be part of that,” said Jones.
Albert D. Brooks died in August 1992, over three months shy of the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary.
At age 95, Marjorie Brooks died this past Dec. 22.
“She set a good example of how to live a good life and care for others,” said Mohler.
Asked if she thought her grandparents were a part of Calvert County history, Gail Brooks thought awhile and stated, “they would not think of themselves as groundbreakers. They were just doing the right thing.”
Still Gail takes pride in the Brooks name and the reputation it has in Calvert, thanks to her grandmother.
“She and my grandfather made the Brooks family prominent,” she said. “I don’t feel pressure. I feel gratitude to come from them.”
E-mail Marty Madden at editorial@calvertindependent.com.
The Calvert Independent
