Iris Watson Callender

She succumbed to complications from a stroke on May 4, 2018. In addition to Leroy, she was comforted in the final weeks by sons, Glenn, Roger, and Rudolph; granddaughter Mercedes, and in the prayers and thoughts of loved ones.

Iris June was born April 5, 1928, to the late Joseph Bright and Clarissa King (Evelyn). She was part of the generation born to West Indian parents who immigrated to the U.S. about World War I. Her father came from Antigua; her mother from Barbados. They fled the poverty of the British colonies to seek opportunity in New York City.

She and late brother, Vincent, were raised in Harlem when commuters rode horse-drawn trolleys on Lenox Avenue. She was confirmed at All Soul’s Episcopal Church on St. Nicholas Avenue in 1940.

Her family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to join the striving “Bajan” community chronicled in Paule Marshall’s 1959 novel, “Brown Girl, Brownstones.” Iris June, known as “IJ” to friends, graduated Girls High School in Brooklyn in 1947. She then worked as a seamstress in a garment factory in the Lower East Side.

In 1950, she and husband Wilsha Watson purchased a two-family house at 102nd Street and 23rd Avenue in East Elmhurst. They were among the first black families to integrate the north Queens neighborhood. Within a decade, East Elmhurst became a community of black middle class families with a cluster of public figures such as Ella Fitzgerald and Malcolm X.

She owned the house her entire adult life and raised five children there, Glenn, Roger, Leroy, Janet, and Rudolph. She was a member of the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in East Elmhurst.

She studied nursing at Brooklyn State Hospital and graduated as a registered nurse in 1953. She was employed at Elmhurst General Hospital in Queens for over 35 years. In 1958, one patient wrote that “the medical skill they displayed, and the moral comfort they brought, sped my recovery greatly.”

She retired from Elmhurst as assistant head nurse in 1991 and established residency in Barbados in a desire to explore her West Indian heritage. She lived in Barbados for over 20 years – longer, in fact, than her mother. Her story was featured in the article, “Ageless Beauty,” published in the Barbados newspaper, The Nation.

She is survived by her sons; nieces Evie, Vivian, and Brenda; nephew, Vincent; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by beloved daughter, Janet, in January. Her ashes will be buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery in East Elmhurst.