By Kelsee Perry with SGJC Student News Network
In Morgan State University’s Student Center, there lies a photograph that tells a million stories.
Amongst the Class of 1950, stood Lucille Brooks, in her remarkable glory.
Brooks, also affectionately known as Doonie, was an established church pianist, community collaborator and music educator for generations of Baltimorians.
“She loved children and she wanted children to have what they were supposed to have. You couldn’t mistreat children with her…and she has done that for countless young people. I mean they would all come back and say the same thing, how much she just helped them,” says Jason Ambush, a family friend and music teacher.
Born in 1912 and raised in a then segregated East Baltimore, Brooks lived to experience all that 20th century Baltimore grew to become.
“Doonie taught my oldest Uncle Andrew how to play piano, Andrew remained a church musician until he died. She also taught my Aunt Anne in high school, at Carver high school, and she was the music teacher there and for a lot of other folks in my church because we were all from East Baltimore.” Jason Ambush, a music teacher, recalls.
Brooks spent much of her youth playing for Waters A.M.E Church. As a teenager she furthered her education at Frederick Douglass High School with other skilled Black creatives such as Cab Calloway and Avon Long.
“Everything she taught me, I do,” Ambush says. “She showed me how to talk to people, she showed me how to listen, she showed me how to help people advocate for themselves. She showed me how to teach music but more often she showed you how to love people.”
In 2014, at 103-years-old, after more than a century of life, Lucille Brooks passed away.
In that same year The Baltimore Sun, a local newspaper, wrote an obituary for her, which covered her widespread impact on Baltimore as a whole.
Her only daughter, Lucille Perry, who was also a church musician and teacher, passed away in 2020.
Their legacy, one filled with such technicolor, continues to be passed down through the hearts and hands of those they touched throughout their lifetime.