Carolyn E. Fugett
‘Another of Baltimore’s great unsung heroines’ was community activist and mother of Reginald F. Lewis
Carolyn E. Fugett, whose belief in education, hard work and religion exerted a powerful influence over her six children, including a son, Reginald F. Lewis, an entrepreneur and notable Wall Street figure whose foundation endowed the $34 million Baltimore museum devoted to African American history and culture that bears his name, died of respiratory failure Feb. 7 at Northwest Hospital.
The former Rosemont resident who lived in Randallstown was 97.
“Carolyn was another of Baltimore’s great unsung heroines,” said former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who is currently president of the University of Baltimore.
“She was a delightful, very warm and caring person who was very active in St. Edward’s Church and the entire West Baltimore community,” Mr. Schmoke said. “She was very supportive and believed in education and was very proud of Reggie and all of her children. She encouraged a lot of young people to follow his example.”
Said Loida Nicholas Lewis, the widow of Reginald F. Lewis: “She was the matriarch of the Lewis and Fugett family. She had six children and was the rock of the family.”
The former Carolyn Edith Cooper, daughter of Samuel J. Cooper Sr., a noted maître d’hôtel who had worked at the Belvedere Hotel and the restaurant Miller Brothers, and Savilla L. Cole, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore.
“She was raised in East Baltimore on Dallas Street — one of eight children in a household that included two cousins — and dropped out of high school to help her mother,” said a son, Jean S. Fugett Jr., a lawyer, who earlier had been a tight end for the Dallas Cowboys and the team now known as the Washington Commanders in the National Football League.
Mrs. Fugett was briefly married to Clinton Lewis, and after they were divorced, she returned to her parents’ home to Dallas Street with their child, Reginald F. Lewis.
She met and fell in love with Jean S. Fugett Sr., a musician, at a dance where his band was playing. The couple married in 1951 and settled into a home in the 2800 block of Mosher Street, where they raised their family of six.
Her husband, a football player at what was then Morgan State University, dropped out, and it was at Mrs. Fugett’s urging that he returned to college and earned his degree.
“He went to Coppin [State University] because he didn’t have a car and could walk there from home,” Mr. Fugett said. “He worked in the post office at night and went to school during the day.”
Mr. Fugett Sr., who later became a schoolteacher and later a National Security Administration code breaker, died in 2016.
While raising her family, Mrs. Fugett worked at the Baltimore department store Hutzler Brothers Company in fur storage, at the Calvert Distillery in Relay, at Sears at Mondawmin and for a decade at the post office from which she retired.
A community activist, she worked tirelessly with then-City Councilwoman Agnes B. Welch for the betterment of their Rosemont neighborhood and served as president of the Rosemont Neighborhood Improvement Association Inc.
Mrs. Fugett moved easily among politicians.
“She met presidents and Hillary Clinton, and everyone liked her,” her son said.
A believer in hard work and education Mrs. Fugett set a pattern for her children.
“All six of my children graduated from college and most of them have advanced degrees,” she told The Sun in a 2003 interview.
Her son Reginald Lewis, who had been an outstanding athlete at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, later attended Virginia State University on a football scholarship and graduated in 1968 from Harvard Law School.
She had a framed handwritten schedule of her son’s classes at Virginia State, to which Mr. Lewis had written and underlined at the bottom: “To be a good lawyer one must study HARD.”
In gratitude for his years at Harvard, Mr. Lewis “gave $3 million to the law school, which named its International Law Center after him,” The Sun reported.
After Harvard, he became a corporate lawyer and later a buyer of businesses, which led to his becoming one of Wall Street’s most successful Black entrepreneurs.
In 1987, he purchased and headed Beatrice International Holdings for almost $1 billion, eventually becoming the nation’s largest Black-owned business.
At his death in 1993, at 50, from a brain tumor, Mr. Lewis’ net worth was $400 million, which made him one of the 400 wealthiest Americans, according to Forbes.
“My husband had been very formidable, and she always gave me very practical and wise advice when I took over operation of the company after his death,” Mrs. Lewis said.
When word reached her that the state was going to build a museum dedicated to Black history, Mrs. Fugett began working closely with then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer in selecting the site for the museum at Pratt and President streets, which received $5 million for its endowment from the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation.
The museum, which opened in 2005, is named for her son.
“It’s breathtaking,” Mrs. Fugett told The Sun at the time. “Reginald was everything to me, and I can see a lot of him here.”
The Roman Catholic faith was also a powerful influence in her life.
“She was a confidant to Cardinals and was a member of St. Edward’s Roman Catholic Church,” according to a family biographical profile, which said she served on committees and was active in Catholic Charities.
“The Catholic church was important to her because it protected us during those racist years,” her son said. “She was the recipient of two papal medals for her work with the church.”
Her husband, who was the grandson of an enslaved person, was interested in researching his family’s genealogy.
“He traced the family to a Tennessee plantation and did detailed research on an ancestor, Henry Bakeman, a free Black man from New York who fought in the Revolutionary War,” The Sun reported in Mr. Fugett’s 2016 obituary.
Based on this information, he was became the first Black man to join the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution in 2004, and five years later, became the first Black president of the John Eager Howard Chapter of the SAR.
Mrs. Fugett, who had a wicked sense of humor, was presented the SAR’s Martha Washington Award.
“Whenever anyone asked about her heritage, she’d say, ‘We were all here to greet you when you arrived on the Mayflower,’ ” her son said, with a laugh.
“She lived her life to her standards and left according to her standards. She was a very good woman to the end, and had kept her faith until the end,” Mrs. Lewis said. “Her life was 97 years of love and service.”
A viewing will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Edward, at Poplar Grove and Prospect Street, which will be followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at 11 a.m.
She is survived by three sons, Jean S. Fugett Jr. of Baltimore, Anthony Fugett of Owings Mills, former head of the Baltimore County NAACP, and Joseph M. Fugett of Randallstown, a Catholic Charities staff member; two daughters, Dr. Rosalyn F. Wiley of Cockeysville, an educator, and a former member of the board of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, and Sharon Sands of Los Angeles, an attorney; a brother, James Cooper of Guilford; two sisters, Doris Hill of Randallstown and Beverly Cooper of Homewood; 13 grandchildren; 17 great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.