Growing up in a family where most were members of 16th Street Baptist Church I spent a considerable amount of time in attendance even though my mother was Catholic. On the Sunday morning of the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombing, I vividly recall my Aunt Mary Alice Clarke Stollenwerck, the Church organist, and other relatives coming to my grandmother’s house all covered in ashes.
On a Sunday two years later, my mother, Dr. Juanita Clarke, drove my siblings and I to church at Our Lady Queen of the Universe on Center Street at the foot of dynamite hill.