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Great Dames of California

These seven women define grace with purpose. Each, in their own extraordinary way, continually helps shape our state.
<Rosa Broadous; Iris Cantor; Sylvia Earle; March Fong Eu; Joan Irvine Smith; Nell Soto; Andrea Van De Kamp

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Rosa Broadous Age: 81 Residence: Pacoima

Accomplishments: Founding member, Valley branch of the

National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People; volunteer,

VISTA; member, Valley Interfaith Council; member, Northeast

Valley Optimists; life member, PTA; literacy tutor, Calvary Baptist

Church; "Queen Mother" award recipient, National Council of Negro Women.

* * *

The telephone call was to Calvary Baptist Church in Pacoima:

"Mrs. Broadous, please." Short pause. "Mother Broadous?"

At 81, Rosa Broadous has earned her title. Mother of 10, six of

them ministers, she is recognized on the cornerstone of Calvary

Baptist Church in Pacoima as mother of the church.

When the church was founded in 1955, she said, many younger

congregants "had left mothers and grandmothers back wherever they

came from, so I was sort of a mother figure."

She sits in a favorite chair in the living room of the home she and

her husband built in 1953. Pinned to her crisp white dress are

emblems of a lifetime of giving: PTA, RSVP (Retired Senior

Volunteer Program), Valley Interfaith Council. . . .

Though she never misses Sunday service, she no longer drives and

gets around less. But then, she said, "I don't feel like getting up every

morning and getting dressed."

That doesn't mean she fiddles away hours before the TV.

"If 'Oprah's' having anything interesting, I'll watch 'Oprah.'

Sometimes it's a waste of time."

Broadous has never been one to waste time. Not with six girls and

four boys to raise while being helpmate to her now-late husband,

Hillery, founding father and first pastor of Calvary Baptist.

Officially, she is not co-founder. In the '50s, a woman's job was to

direct the choir, work with the youth and the mission society "and

entertain." Today that's changing, she said. "Praise the Lord."

Rosa Broadous, born in Arkansas, was the only child of a

laundrywoman and a mill worker. She met Hillery when he came to

stoke the wood stove at her boarding school dorm.

"The sparks flew," she said, speaking of friction, not romance. But

they married the next year, in 1937.

They had four children by World War II when, like others leaving

the South, Hillery found work in an Oregon shipyard. Later, after his

discharge from the service, they moved to the San Fernando Valley.

Rosa Broadous' father was told once he was wasting money to

send her to a Christian school--"All she's going to be able to do is clean houses."

After being widowed in 1982, she earned an associate degree in

human relations from Los Angeles Mission College. She regrets not

having a four-year degree but said, "I don't think I'm going back to school."

She was always there for her children, even when she "had to leave

a job and go to school to see what was going on." When one of them

graduated from high school, the whole class erupted, "Praise the Lord!"

With children and grandchildren, she's learned, "being able to keep

your mouth shut" is a great virtue, though "the older you get, the

harder it is." William took over as pastor after his father's death. His

sister, Cecilia, is a missionary in South Africa.

Empowering children and adults through reading is part of a life

"pretty fulfilled." She's also worked for the NAACP, the Braille

Institute, Scouting and the YWCA and takes pride in watching

children at church "grow into strong men and women."

Her philosophy? "You do what you can, and leave the rest to the Lord."