Neighbors

Family brought sense of community

Siblings followed oldest sister to city to find jobs

David Coates / The Detroit News Helen McMurray was the first of eight siblings from Elizabethtown, Ky. to move to Detroit.

By Cameron McWhirter / The Detroit News

    DETROIT — In the face of the broad economic and social forces that besieged the Elmhurst block, a tightly-knit community developed there in the 1970s and 1980s, thanks in part to an invasion by one Kentucky family — and in part to the presence of a woman who loved her flower garden.

    Helen McMurray, 70, whose maiden name was Gaither, was the oldest of eight children in the hamlet of Elizabethtown, Ky., about 60 miles south of Louisville. She moved to Detroit in 1956 after marrying a soldier stationed in Fort Knox and stayed after they separated.

    Black people could find work easily, she was told. Her family got the word, and every few years in the 1960s, one more of Helen’s five brothers and two sisters would follow her to the Motor City.

    They would stay with her on Elmhurst until they could find their own homes. For a while, all of those homes were on the 1900 block of Elmhurst. Helen, the matriarch after their parents died, Earl, Wanda Cowans, Howard, Tillie Carrington, William, Stanley and James all lived within shouting distance.

    Cowans, 66, who still lives a few lots down the street from her sister, remembers going to the grocery store and people asking where she lived.

    “I live over on Gaither Avenue,” she would reply, with a laugh. “And they would say, ‘Gaither Avenue? I’ve never heard of that.’ And I would tell them it’s the same as Elmhurst; we just have one big family living there.”

    In the late 1970s, Gaither family gatherings brought dozens to the lawns on the southwest side of the block. There was dancing and games and, prized above all, southern cooking: ribs, potato salad, macaroni and cheese and boiled pigs feet.

    In addition, the Elmhurst block club would join with the Monterey Street block just to the north to hold parties in the summertime, which helped give the neighborhood a community feel.

    “They would block off the streets; everybody would be eating and dancing,” said Leona McLawery, 49, the granddaughter of Nannie Montgomery, the longtime club president. “Everyone came out. From the apartment buildings, all the houses.”

    The club also sponsored contests to see who had the nicest garden. Montgomery, with her small front flower garden, usually won.