Daisy Carter, a retired employee of the City of Philadelphia, dies at 90

Daisy Carter, a retired employee of the City of Philadelphia, died on Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at Treasure Coast Hospice in Stuart, Florida. She was 90.

She was born on Oct. 17, 1931, and was the only child born to the late Lottie Thompson and Robert Clarence Carter in Stuart.

She was educated at Stuart Training School, a segregated school that African-American students in Stuart were required to attend from kindergarten to 12th grade. She was a member of the girls’ basketball team.

Carter moved to North Philadelphia with her mother when she was 16. She completed her last year of high school and graduated from Kensington High School for Girls in 1949, one of the few African-American students attending the school. During that time, she was paralyzed due to an overdose of Novocain given to her by a dentist. Although she was told she would never walk again, she was determined to go to her prom and dance, and she did.

Carter graduated from Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in therapeutic recreation and administration. She also attended St. Joseph’s University School of Social Work. She was certified as a therapeutic recreation specialist by the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) and the Pennsylvania Recreation and Parks Society (PRPS).

She was a good friend of the late Temple basketball coach John Chaney, who presented her with a framed letter of thanks and a basketball signed by him and the team when she retired. She was a member of the Temple University General Alumni Board and the NCAA Certification Steering Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics for several years.

Her daughter, Iya Marilyn Kai Jewett, recalled her mother teaching her about African-American history at a young age.

“One day, while watching a news report on the Civil Rights Movement, I asked Mom who were these Negroes they kept talking about,” said Jewett. “I was only 4 years old at the time. She told me it was a name that other people call us, but that we’re not Negroes or colored people. The most important thing she ever did was arming me with knowledge of my true identity. She was proud of being African and so am I. That was a very revolutionary point of view in the 1950s when most people knew nothing of Africa.”

She was a domestic worker before she was employed by the Philadelphia Department of Recreation in the late 1960s at the Athletic Recreation Center. She retired after over 30 years of service, developing and directing programming for pre-school, teen, older adult and special-needs populations.

She held many positions in the city, including assistant camp director and drama specialist at a summer day camp for the autistic, senior citizen program supervisor at East Germantown Recreation Center (now Lonnie Young), education resources coordinator at the Atwater Kent Museum, and, at her retirement in 1999, coordinator of the Class 500 Grant Program. The recreation department sent her to troubled recreation centers to stabilize them and develop programming.

She was a founding life member, secretary, treasurer and board member of the NRPA Ethnic Minority Society (EMS); chair of the PRPS; and an honorary member of the Philadelphia African Student Council.

She received numerous awards for her work, including three Four Chaplains Legion of Honor Awards, a City of Philadelphia Liberty Bell Award, and two appreciation awards from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania.

In the 1960s, she organized Negro History Week programs at historic Mother African Zoar Methodist Church, her Philadelphia church home, which included African-American art exhibits, Dr. Edward Robinson’s “Black Rhapsody” and her African friends teaching about their cultures.

She was a board member for Stuart’s historic Lyric Theater, established a scholarship at St. Paul AME Church and organized its annual fundraiser at the Lyric.

Carter began collecting Black art in the 1960s and also amassed a collection of authentic African masks. She loved reading and took Marilyn to the library every week and developed a large library of her own. She read the newspaper daily and discussed current events with her at the dinner table. She loved to talk and was outspoken. She loved entertaining in her new home and was known as an excellent host.

She is survived by her daughter, Marilyn Kai Jewett; grandson, Jason Maurice Jewett; cousins Pauline Leonard and Lloyd Thompson; and other family members and friends.

A beachfront celebration of life and jazz reception will be held on Monday, Oct. 17, 2022, in Stuart, Florida.