The Dorseys are at it again, ordering stunning quantities of chicken, corn and green beans, preparing to convene once more on the hilly spot in Sykesville where family roots go deep.
The reunion T-shirt order ran to 170 this time for the Dorsey family's 60th Labor Day gathering. The 2009 cryptic T-shirt motto - "From Yuka Purl to York Imperial" - tells a story, but so does most everything connected to the event, because what else is family but one large ball of narrative twine.
"My mother always impressed upon us, 'Remember you're a Dorsey,' " said Rosie Hutchinson. That line tells a story, too, and not just about why the family makes a point to not serve alcohol at these events, but why the fuss is made about the little schoolhouse just down the hill, the Historic Sykesville Colored Schoolhouse, as the official name goes. All 12 of Carrie and Edward's children attended there, and many tell stories about the difficulties of continuing their education beyond there in the face of racial segregation and little means.
"Morals, ethics, education," might have been a family motto, said Hutchinson, who went on from the one-room segregated schoolhouse to high school, college and a career as a teacher and school principal, one of many family members who devoted their professional lives to education.
Hutchinson - at 83 years the baby of Carrie and Edward's children - was sitting a few days ago at a long table in the pale green cinder block building tagged with the sign outside: "Dorsey Family Center." Family members recalled how they started putting up this little building in the late 1960s and finishing in the 1970s, moving the reunion just a few yards to the west from the spot behind the family home where they first settled down for a picnic by the York Imperial apple tree on Labor Day 1950.
That home is gone, as are Carrie and Edward, as are nine of the 12 children who assembled that first time, as are many other cousins, aunts and uncles. Those who remain from the original reunion photograph of Carrie and Edward and the 12 children are Rosie, Mae Whiten, who turned 90 this year, and Warren Dorsey, whose 89th birthday falls in two months.
The photograph has been enlarged and mounted on a board and set against a wall at the far end of the building, near the two framed photographs of Carrie in her swept-up hair and high, fringed collar and Edward in his derby hat cocked to one side, his high stiff white collar and natty necktie. They must have been in their late teens and early 20s in these pictures.
