Posted on by Tamara Lucas Copeland

Forever Friends

One day I got a call from a longtime friend. Madeline, a civilian employee of the US Department of the Army, was seeking a high-level security clearance and had noted me as a reference.

“The form asked how long I had known the person listed as a reference. When I wrote 50+ years, I startled myself,” she told me in her typical dryly humorous way.

We chuckled. How could that be?

It seemed like just yesterday we attended high school homecoming games cracking up at halftime as alumni from various years would be invited onto the football field: 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, even 75. We would laugh out loud and comment in that sarcastic, all-knowing-teenager way, “50 years! Can they still walk?”

Now it is our turn; almost 50 years since we graduated from high school. Sadly, Madeline won’t be walking out on the field for that 50th high school celebration. Dr. Madeline B. Swann, chemist, passed away on July 12, 2017.

You never think of your friends dying. Eight of us had been an unbroken circle since middle school. We were first the Junior Valianettes, then the Valianettes and then in our adulthood, the name that stuck was Divas. We had missed some years in between as we went off separately to college and established careers and families, but we came back together as we reached our forties. We always got together in Washington, DC to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day and went to see the latest black-themed movies. Dreamgirls, This is It, and The Help stand out. We constantly talked about the challenges facing black people in America and bemoaned the ones we faced growing up in racially-segregated Richmond, Virginia.

When I told the group that I was writing a manuscript to try and capture our decades-long friendship—with the overlay of race in America—they were all supportive. But Madeline truly was one of my biggest cheerleaders. She loved the concept and the name I gave my book-to-be, Daughters of the Dream.

Her last gift to each of us was a framed group picture with a cross stitch of each name on that individual’s gift and the inscription: Daughters of the Dream. Today I am even more committed than ever to finishing my book, and I know that Madeline is near, still cheering me on.

4 Replies to “Forever Friends”

      1. Tamara Lucas Copeland – I am African-American, a child of the South, born, educated and still living there. This distinction provides a unique personal vantage point for issues of racial equity. I am also an only child, a circumstance that sometimes leads to friends being more like family. These factors contribute to my love for my forever friends, my perspective on the role race plays in America, and my authorship of both the Daughters of the Dream blog and now a book by the same name. or decades, I watched my mother research the genealogical history of her family, talking to relatives, reviewing microfiche on hundreds of library visits long before the internet existed, as she labored to produce two published works. Motivated by my mother’s determination to document her family and by my and my friends’ realization of the importance of our five-plus decades-long friendship, I took on the challenge of telling our story. Not a historian, but an avid observer of the overlay of history on the racial reality of America, Daughters of the Dream is the result. Currently, I am president of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG). Founded in 1992, WRAG is a nonprofit association with over 100 of the most well-respected foundations and corporate giving programs in the Greater Washington, D.C. region as its members. WRAG’s groundbreaking work, Putting Racism on the Table, has received widespread recognition for enabling the philanthropic community to understand so they might work for racial equity. I came to WRAG with extensive experience in nonprofit management and on children’s policy having led Voices for America’s Children, the National Health & Education Consortium, and the Infant Mortality Initiative of Southern Governors’ Association and Southern Legislative Conference and having been Congressman Bobby Scott’s (D-VA) Legislative Director.
        Tamara Lucas Copeland says:

        Thanks, Marsha. Please share with whomever you think may be interested in Madeline, our story, or what it was like to grow up in Richmond.

    2. Tamara Lucas Copeland – I am African-American, a child of the South, born, educated and still living there. This distinction provides a unique personal vantage point for issues of racial equity. I am also an only child, a circumstance that sometimes leads to friends being more like family. These factors contribute to my love for my forever friends, my perspective on the role race plays in America, and my authorship of both the Daughters of the Dream blog and now a book by the same name. or decades, I watched my mother research the genealogical history of her family, talking to relatives, reviewing microfiche on hundreds of library visits long before the internet existed, as she labored to produce two published works. Motivated by my mother’s determination to document her family and by my and my friends’ realization of the importance of our five-plus decades-long friendship, I took on the challenge of telling our story. Not a historian, but an avid observer of the overlay of history on the racial reality of America, Daughters of the Dream is the result. Currently, I am president of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG). Founded in 1992, WRAG is a nonprofit association with over 100 of the most well-respected foundations and corporate giving programs in the Greater Washington, D.C. region as its members. WRAG’s groundbreaking work, Putting Racism on the Table, has received widespread recognition for enabling the philanthropic community to understand so they might work for racial equity. I came to WRAG with extensive experience in nonprofit management and on children’s policy having led Voices for America’s Children, the National Health & Education Consortium, and the Infant Mortality Initiative of Southern Governors’ Association and Southern Legislative Conference and having been Congressman Bobby Scott’s (D-VA) Legislative Director.
      Tamara Lucas Copeland says:

      Thanks Renee. Please share with others who knew Madeline or who may be interested in lifelong friendships or in segregation and civil rights.

      Reply

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