Life filled with Gullah traditions

They say Albertha Coakley could prepare dishes so flavorful that those eating them felt certain she designed her meals to suit their tastes. Coakley kept a kitchen filled with the aromas of foods she learned to prepare from a grandmother born in the late 1800s. If you never had the privilege of sitting down at her table, you missed something.

Hoppin' John, wild game, red rice and stewed fish (heads on) were just some of the Lowcountry delights family and friends enjoyed from Coakley's kitchen. She didn't use the words hurry and cook in the same sentence. Foods simmered under her expert eye.

"She knew how to make tasty food happen in an ugly pot," says Joyce Coakley, oral historian and her sister-in-law. "She was keeping traditions alive. How sad I am that I did not sit down and interview her before she died. You talk about Gullah traditions, she maintained Gullah traditions."

Coakley, who was born Oct. 2, 1947, died Oct. 8. She was raised by her grandmother in the Black Well community up U.S. Highway 17 on Porchers Bluff Road. It was a community where the wildflowers grew that her grandmother, Miss Katie, sold around Meeting and Broad streets on the peninsula. As an adult, she lived in the Seven Mile community, always within easy walking distance of the place where she was raised.

When many she knew had begun relying on drugstores for their medicines, she was still going into the woods for plants such as life everlasting (a bush used to make medicinal tea) to tend to her children's colds, Joyce Coakley says. That's what her grandmother taught her and that's what she did.

It was as simple as that.

Coakley also practiced a well-known tradition, basketmaking.

"She was a left-handed basketmaker," Joyce Coakley says, adding that her sister-in-law supported herself exclusively by making the baskets she sold along Highway 17.

"Left-handed people switch their stitches and go left. They feed their baskets from the left rather than the right. A trained collector can see that it's a little different," says Joyce Coakley, author of "Sweetgrass Baskets and the Gullah Tradition."

No one thought that Coakley, who had stared death in the face several times over recent years, would die the day that she sent for her great-grandchild, says Joyce Coakley. She spent that last day thoroughly enjoying the toddler's company.

"That's a big Gullah tradition."

At Coakley's funeral, one person spoke of her as a treasured church sister. Another spoke as a neighbor. Another as a friend. Before leaving Greater Goodwill AME Church, they sang "On My Way Home," one of her favorites.

Then, they gave her a standing ovation.

Reach Wevonneda Minis at 937-5705 or wminis@postandcourier.com.