NCA, Friends & Family
of Tom Feelings
will
celebrate his life and legacy with a 2-day memorial, Friday, February 27
and 28, 2004. Our dear brother, master illustrator, sculptor and very
popular nice guy, made his transition on August 25 after recently learning
that he had cancer. Family and friends joined him in his fight of this
dreaded disease, and held a 70th birthday party for him on May 18 (the day
before his birthday) in his longtime community of Brooklyn, NY. He had
never had a birthday party prior to this, and wanted to celebrate with his
friends, not knowing how bad the condition was.
Friends started a fundraising drive to
send him to a facility in Germany that specialized in cancer patients, but
he became too weak to travel and was hospitalized in South Carolina until
he got strong enough to travel. Tom traveled to a similar facility in
Mexico, but the cancer had spread too far, and time was not on his side.
The first memorial tribute will take
place at Medgar Evers College, Founder’s Auditorium, 1650 Bedford Avenue,
followed the next day with a memorial service and salute at Rev. Johnny
Ray Youngblood’s St. Paul’s Baptist Church, 859 Hendrix St., both located
in his beloved Brooklyn. A partial list of invited guests include, Maya
Angelou, Roberta Flack, Amiri Baraka, Jim Barnes, Elombe Brath, Ernie
Crichlow, Errol Doris, Cy Edwards, Paul Goodnight, Rev. Marshall Hatch,
Eli Kince, Sylvia Huen, Abbey Lincoln, George Edward Tait, Quincy Troupe,
Randy Weston, Camille Yarbrough, The Putnam Avenue Group, Imani Dancers,
Drummers and Singers and the St. Paul’s Praise Ministry of dancers,
drummers and singers.
Many of Tom’s lifelong friends, and some
new ones have pitched in to form a committee and production team “NCA,
Family & Friends of Tom Feelings”. headed by Co-chairs, Kwame Brathwaite,
NCA president and Dr. Brenda Greene, Director of The Center for Black
Literature at Medgar Evers College.
Committee members and friends, Richard Barclift, Gloria C. Thomas,
Gertrude Harvey, Khaliyah Washington-Seely, Gwendolyn Wilson, Frank
Edwards, Lillian Harvey,
Lafayette
Robinson, Grant Spears, Surya Peterson, Izell Glover, Jimmie Mannas,
Emmett Wigglesworth, Kitty Chavis, Betty Thomas, Abdul Aziz, Miriam
Francis, Brenda Mattingly, Otto Neals, Pat Cummings, Joan Banks and
Matthew Meade, have put together a program that includes friends from all
over the U.S. This tribute is endorsed by Kamili Feelings, Tom’s youngest
son and executor of his estate.
Contacts are still being made to locate
other key friends of Feelings. For further information, contact Kwame
Brathwaite at (212) 410-7892 or ncanewyork@aol.com.
