Carrie took care of the children and the home, and, as Warren Dorsey told the story, his father worked as a laborer here and there, holding a job in one place as the pressure of keeping a lid on his emotions would allow.
"He could take being pushed around, put down only so long," said Warren, who goes by the nickname "Uncle Tom," but that's another story having nothing to do with the pejorative connotation of the phrase. There was a ditty his father used to sing to him when he was a boy, and the name "Tom" was in the refrain. "Tom" stuck, through his college days at Morgan State, through a career as a government biologist at Fort Detrick, to a master's in education at Goucher College and to principal at Carroll Manor Elementary School in Frederick County.
A few family members gathered at the center a couple of weeks before the event itself to start getting the place ready, checking the heating system, stove, bathroom plumbing. On the Sunday before Labor Day, the advance crew will show up early to set up tables, canopies, a grill for the hot dog roast, a kiddie pool and a "big bounce" in the backyard.
A food crew will start peeling vegetables for the salad and doing some preparation for the early team that shows up Monday morning to make corn on the cob, string beans, cucumber and tomato salad, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, lemonade and ice tea.
The menu has changed little since the early days, but its preparation has had to bend with time. Mae and Rosie tell about the days when they would show up the day before, sleep on the floor and get up hours before dawn on Labor Day to start cooking pound after pound of Dorsey fried chicken. Six or seven years ago that practice ended, said Edna Greer, whose mother, Thelma Jackson, was one of the original 12 children.
"Nobody can do it now, we're too old," said Greer, principal of Leith Walk Elementary School in Baltimore City. "The young people don't want to do it."
For the last few years, a caterer in Baltimore City has been called in to prepare the Dorsey chicken and potato salad according to the traditional family formula that no one wants to talk about. Some 300 pieces of chicken and the potato salad are scheduled to be delivered this morning. That goes also for a 60-year commemorative cake prepared by a custom baker in the city.
