A 70-year friendship started at one of Charlotte’s segregated drugstore lunch counters.
THE SMILE IS WHAT Betty McQuay-Tysinger noticed first. When she was just 16 years old and starting her first real job, at an Eckerd drugstore on the Square in Charlotte, Betty needed to see a kind face. That smile welcomed her.
It didn’t matter that the grin came from Lucille Stewart, a 23-year-old black woman. And it didn’t matter that in 1946, Betty, who is white, was hardly encouraged to befriend the woman who prepared food for lunch counter patrons at the store.
They became friends. And they stayed friends after Betty left Eckerd in 1949 to get married and eventually raise three children, while Lucille moved on to work at North Carolina National Bank, first as what she calls a maid and then in the cafeteria.
For years, they heard updates primarily from their go-between, Libby Helderman, who had been their boss at Eckerd. She remained friends with Lucille for the rest of her life, and became Betty’s aunt when she set up the young girl with her nephew.
Since Lucille retired from her job at Bank of America in the late 1980's, Lucille and Betty have talked on the phone more frequently, and have visited each other for momentous birthday celebrations, Thanksgivings, and quiet afternoons of conversation.
“I don’t think I ever saw her angry,” Betty says. “Even now, I haven’t seen her angry. She’s just a good person.”
That’s 70 years of friendship during which Betty has never seen Lucille angry.
Lucille is now 94. Betty is 86.
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