Enlarge Thereasea Clark Elder with a pair of students in the park that bears her name.

Posted: August 21st, 2010 Greg Lacour

At 83, after decades of community involvement and activism, Thereasea Clark Elder can’t put as much energy into her work as she used to.

Luckily, other folks have stepped in – like Clair Lane, whose organization, Our Foundation For Children, has taken over an event in the Rockwell Park/Hemphill Heights neighborhood in north Charlotte that Elder used to spearhead.

It's a back-to-school celebration and fair, held at the neighborhood’s main park – which is, not coincidentally, named after Elder. When Elder and other community activists created the event in the early '90s, they envisioned it as a fun way to get people in the neighborhood and their kids to know each other, as well as a chance to collect school supplies for needy families. It was a small gathering, with about 50 families coming out every year.

Then, about five years ago, “Clair came in with OFC, and we just went in with them,” Elder said. “We’re getting old,” she laughed, “and we didn’t have anyone to take over. They’re much more equipped to do it than we were.”

OFC held the latest fair at Elder Park on August 21, and hundreds of people came out on a hot summer day to listen to music, eat hot dogs and pick up needed school supplies. Lane said she expected to distribute supplies – pens, pencils, notebooks, backpacks – to about 700 people.

The organization collected about $2,500 throughout the year, not counting the actual supplies people donated. One woman donated 350 backpacks, Lane said. The only caveat: To get supplies, you had to have a child with you. “I don’t care if you have to borrow a kid,” she said. OFC suspected last year that some adults collected school supplies to sell.

Lane said she met Elder not long after she moved to Charlotte from New Jersey, where she had founded OFC in 2001. Elder was a minor legend in community activist circles, where she donated her time and energy toward trying to make neighborhoods better. She’s worked with Crossroads Charlotte on several initiatives.

“Nobody knows more about Charlotte than she does,” Lane said. The two women joined forces, and the foundation began raising money and spreading the word about the back-to-school fair. The crowd has grown every year.

“I hope this year is the biggest one. I hope,” Lane said. “This is just about giving back. Pay it forward, that’s my motto. I tell people, ‘If you’ve been blessed, carry that blessing with another person so you can be blessed twice.’”

Elder said that kind of involvement in community life is something that’s largely been lost. As a child in Depression-era Charlotte, she said she saw families involved in each other’s lives and helping out when one was going through a rough time. She learned then: “We are responsible for each other,” she said. “These are my sisters and my brothers.”

And giving children the tools they need to learn, she said, is one of the best ways someone can help a community. Education matters. “I know it’s the only way people can move out of the situation they’re in and move to a higher quality of life,” she said. “And they come to understand that they don’t just do things or themselves. It’s for the community, and for all humanity.”

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