East Parkside neighbors celebrate community leader Callalily Cousar’s 95th birthday, a bit early

Officially, Callalily Cousar retired as president of the East Parkside Residents Association in West Philadelphia nearly a year ago, in September 2023.

In reality, however, “Every time I say I’m retired, people just laugh,” Cousar said in a recent telephone interview.

They laugh because, while Cousar, who is 94, was talking with a reporter, she was simultaneously standing on the front porch of her home, handing out food to anyone who came by.

“Mostly today I have blueberries and corn, peaches, apples, juices, kale, and peppers,” she said.

The East Parkside Residents Association’s (EPRA) Facebook page announces the free food giveaway happening “Every Friday 2:30 until Gone.”

Cousar has been the face and power behind the East Parkside neighborhood group for 35 years. She also served as block captain of the 4100 block of Poplar Street for 34 years.

During that time, she’s been a home-based hairdresser, school crossing guard, a union shop steward, and a short-term foster mother to 125 children.

As a community leader, she was part of the planning for the Please Touch Museum and the Philadelphia School District’s School of the Future coming to Parkside. Her organization also pushed to develop the North Star Playground on what had been two vacant lots at 41st and Poplar.

Over the last couple of years, she and the EPRA have taken graduating high school seniors to New York to see The Lion King.

“One year we took 20 students, this year we took 12,” she said. “It was the first time that most of them had ever been to New York, and it was definitely the first time any of them had seen a Broadway play.”

Ruby Davis, the chaplain of EPRA, said the organization has not yet been able to agree on who should replace Cousar.

“You have to have the right mindset and the right heart,” Davis said at Cousar’s early birthday celebration on Aug. 24. “You have to know how business gets done.”

The community gathered to honor her 95th birthday, which is actually on Sept. 25. The invitations also called Cousar “Ms. Dit,” after a family nickname that began when a younger brother couldn’t pronounce her first name. “He called me ‘Cal-Ditty,’” she said.

The name, Callalily, has been in her North Carolina-rooted family for generations. Cousar said she was named after her mother’s sister.

Last Saturday, about 200 people filled a banquet hall at the Philadelphia Business & Technology Center in West Parkside for the party. Cousar wore a deep-purple dress. Small, artificial, light-purple calla lily flower petals decorated the white tablecloths.

Family members traveled from North Carolina, where Cousar’s parents, John Henry and Rosa Norcum, lived before migrating to Philadelphia. Other relatives came from Alabama and Maryland.

One cousin who lives in West Oak Lane met Cousar and her children for the first time.

“Are you a Littlejohn?” Barbara Cousar, the honoree’s middle child, asked Dominic Littlejohn, a young man with hair in shoulder-length locks.

In addition to music and dancing, people at the party gave testimonies about Cousar’s community service. There were a number of citations from politicians. One, from Vice President Kamala Harris, was dated Aug. 24, two days after Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination to seek the presidency of the United States.

“I was really surprised at that one,” Cousar said.

Born in North Philadelphia, Cousar has spent a lifetime helping others. After graduating from Dobbins Vocational Technical High School in 1947, she was a hairdresser in her aunt’s salon before opening her own beauty salon in North Philadelphia.

In 1959, she married Robert Edward Cousar, a forklift operator at a plant on Westmoreland Street. They moved to East Parkside and were married for 37 years until Robert’s death in 1996.

When they began having children, Cousar left her beauty salon and started working as a hairdresser from home.

They had three children: Glenda, a nurse now living in Maryland; Barbara, a social worker for a STEM project in Philadelphia; and Robert Jr., a business owner who lives in Alabama.

When Robert, her youngest, began kindergarten, Cousar took on another job: working as a school crossing guard for 16 years. She also served as block captain for more than 34 years.

She organized numerous block beautification projects, and her block won the “City Clean Block” contest twice, “showcasing her ability to inspire collective action and pride among her neighbors,” her daughter, Glenda Cousar, wrote about her mother.

When Cousar’s children began leaving for college, Cousar and her husband became foster parents.

“I had the space. I had the time. I had the care, and I had the love,” Cousar said. “I grew up with a family like that.“

She said her own parents often welcomed relatives, especially those coming from the South, to stay with them until they could find a place of their own.

”I had never felt that kind of love before.”

“That’s the way we grew up,” she said. “I try to do like my mother. If we had a bad bag of potatoes, she would say, ‘Don’t cook them all. Save a couple because somebody might need some.’“

Cousar began taking in foster children, from around 1975 through 1996. She paused that year when her husband became ill and died. As recently as about 10 years ago, however, she was called in to take in more children. She mostly took in teenagers on a short-term, temporary basis.

“I had someone add it up, and I had 125 children stay with me,” she said.

Around the time her husband became ill, Cousar was worried that she could no longer take care of the youngest child she had ever fostered. He came to their home at age 6 and stayed with Cousar until he was 9.

Cousar mentioned to her son that she was worried that she could no longer manage to keep the child.

His mother didn’t ask, but Robert Jr. and his wife adopted the boy. “He was part of our family by then,” Robert Jr. said. That child is now in his 30s.

Sometimes, her former foster children or children from the neighborhood come by to say hello.

“I might be sitting on the porch, and one of them will drive by and suddenly, I hear the car go, ‘Screech!’ Then they stop. and back up the car to give me a big hug,” she said. “They are surprised to see me, because sometimes, they may not have known if I’m still living or dead. It tickles me.”

On Saturday, Shelly Knox, one of her foster children, attended the party. Knox wrote a book, Silent Tears I’ve Cried, about the abuse she suffered for much of her childhood.

Then, she went to stay with “Mom Dit.”

“I was 13 when I went to stay with her, and I’m 57 now,” Knox said. ”I had never felt that kind of love before.”