Life Works Of Poet Gwendolyn Brooks Celebrated During Memorial Service In Chicago

Not even a cold winter blizzard could keep hundreds from packing into the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago to pay their last respects to acclaimed poet, writer and humanitarian Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks.

For nearly three hours, Brooks' family and friends celebrated her legacy with Messages from the World, a collaboration of brief personal reflections and readings of a poem or excerpt from one of her works.

Noted historian Lerone Bennett Jr., executive editor of EBONY Magazine, officiated the service and described the world-class poet as "a Chicago institution, like Michael Jordan, and the lake."

Her "cultural" son, Haki Madhubuti, read the eulogy. In it he said, "She slept with paper and dictionary at ,her bed, slept with children in her head. Her first and second drafts are pen on paper. Her husband thought he underestimated her. She thought we all had possibilities. Nothing is simplified or simply given, she wore her love in her language."

Among those who attended the memorial included Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson; poet Mari Evans; poet Sonia Sanchez; president of Kennedy-King College Dr. Wellington Wilson; president of Chicago State University Dr. Elnora Daniel; president of Atlanta's Morris Brown College and former Chicago State President Dolores Cross; D.C. poet laureate Delores Kendrick; noted TV talk show host Tavis Smiley; founder of Chicago's ETA Creative Arts Foundation Abena Joan Brown; and Chicago playwright and cofounder of the ETA Creative Arts Foundation Okoro Harold Johnson.

The late Poet Laureate of Illinois, 83, died of stomach cancer at her South Side home in Chicago.

Brooks became the first Black to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for her second book of poetry, Annie Allen.

At the time of Brooks' death, she was the Distinguished Professor of English at Chicago State University and the Poet Laureate of Illinois.

She was preceded in death in 1996 by her husband, poet and writer Henry Blakely. Survivors include a son, Henry Blakely Jr.; a daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely; and a grandson, Nicholas Blakely.