THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996 TAG: 9607200256
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WENDY GROSSMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 82 lines
For the past month, Fannie Fulcher Jones has been crying.
She's just so happy.
Jones has been busy planning the menu, picking out her outfit, worrying over every little detail and polishing her welcome speech for the third George and Bryant family reunion.
The three-day combination love- and eatfest kicked off Friday night at the Doubletree Inn with 40 family members.
There's a lot of catching up to do. Three of Jones' cousins came from Monrovia, Liberia. Another 10 African-born cousins arrived from Maryland, New York and Los Angeles. Most of the 10 had immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s after the civil war in Liberia.
Finding her long-lost family is a dream come true for Jones.
``At 62 years old, I'll be seeing relatives I've never seen in my life - some I didn't know existed,'' Jones said.
Two of her uncles, Robert and Samuel George, and other former slaves, immigrated to Monrovia, returning to their homeland with the Marcus Garvey movement early in the 20th century.
That's the last anyone in America heard about the African branch of the family.
But they weren't forgotten. Jones' cousin, Rhoda Nixon, 71, asked every person she met who had traveled anywhere if they knew her lost kinfolk.
She struck gold at a wedding four years ago in Adelphi, Md. A former ambassador to Liberia had the phone number of one of Nixon's lost cousins. Two days later, Jestina Gibson telephoned her American cousin.
The two discovered it's a small world. Turns out that for the past two years, they had lived within six blocks of each other in Adelphi.
The two met the next day and held each other for three minutes.
``It was awesome. It was unbelievable,'' said Gibson's daughter, Jestina Gray, 36. ``I had goosebumps on top of goosebumps on top of goosebumps.''
``My mom just kept crying. She was weeping continuously,'' Gray said.
The cousins talk on the phone, spend weekends and share dinners at each other's homes.
``We're like sisters,'' Gibson said. They have a lot in common.
``Her daughter and my daughter look just alike,'' Nixon said. They both have a set of twins in their family. They make the same potato salad and sprinkle the same spices on their collard greens before they cook them up with salt meat. ``She does it the same way that I do,'' said Nixon.
The meeting between the two inspired Nixon to try to locate the rest of her African cousins and invite them to a family reunion in 1994. Six showed up. This year's reunion is being held in Norfolk because Fannie Fulcher Jones' grandmother settled here in the 1800s after leaving North Carolina.
``My family roots are deeply embedded in this city,'' Jones said.
She wants to proudly display Norfolk to her African cousins, such as Violet Thomas. Cousin Violet fled to Los Angeles five years ago after all her aunts and great aunts had been killed in the Liberian civil war.
``Having all of her family killed, she didn't know what it was like to have a family,'' Jones said. ``She felt she had nobody in this world but her and her two brothers.''
She won't be alone again. Jones calls her every month. And Thomas met 40 others Friday night.
Today, the George/Bryant clan will hold an Afrocentric workshop, focusing on their roots. Then they'll take a harbor cruise of Norfolk.
``Most of these folk have never been south of Washington,'' Jones said.
Tonight will be what Jones calls ``The Gala Banquet.'' Tables will be adorned with gold vases that Jones filled with pink, yellow and white rose buds and daisies.
The dessert will be when Rhoda Nixon presents scholarships and cash awards to the children who just finished elementary school, high school and college. They raised the money by selling videos of the last reunion for $25.
Sunday morning, the family is busing to Goff Street to Jones' home church, The Union United Church of Christ, which her Grandmother Fannie helped organize.
After church, the family will gather at Calvary Cemetery to lay a garland of yellow gladiolas on Grandma Fannie's grave.
``I am just so happy,'' Jones said. ``I know my grandmother, Fannie, she wouldn't want it no other way.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Fannie Fulcher Jones, center, jubilantly greets her cousins, Hashim
Fulcher of Charlotte, left, and Rick Fulcher of Atlanta, Friday
night as the third George and Bryant family reunion began at the
Doubletree Inn in Norfolk. Forty family members were there.
KEYWORDS: FAMILY REUNION by CNB