Lee Burwell

LEE BURWELL

Lee Burwell, a lifelong resident of Greenburgh, shares the story of his parents coming from North Carolina and growing up in the town.

Lee’s mother grew up in North Carolina during the 1930s; she would go to work out in the field picking cotton most of the day and barely got any money for it. Everything in the South was segregated. They would go to stores and weren't served fairly. In South Carolina, Lee’s parents were impoverished. They would have to go to an outhouse without running water, and his mother had nine siblings to share everything with. Lee’s parents decided to leave the state and head north for more job opportunities and a better life for their family.

Westchester was their first stop, and they migrated to the white plain area. Moving slightly between Greenburgh, White Plains, and Tarrytown. Lee’s mother became a domestic and worked in someone's house in Scarsdale. His father had joined the military briefly before becoming a mechanic.

As Lee grew up, he would go to Scarsdale with his mother. He would help take out the garbage, watch his mother cook, clean the house, and help raise the kids there. He felt as though everyone was raised together, including himself. The family had four kids, and they stayed till college. Lee and his mother formed a strong bond with the family, and frequently, the children would take Lee out to different parts of the state like he was family. There was one time when his mother’s employer even stayed with them for two weeks during her marriage difficulties. Scarsdale showed a different lifestyle for Lee, where he could be different but accepted.

Lee described his father as short-tempered and a big storyteller. Very different from his mother. His father had to prove everything when he got out of the military, prove he was a good mechanic and a good father, and fight the system. When he was in the military, everything was given to him. Lee described it as a “Salmon going upstream.”

It taught him to be a hard worker because “the color of your skin doesn't matter as long as you are good at what you do.” His mother was a large inspiration for this. “Hard work and trying to do your best are important, but don’t just settle. When you have a set of standards, no one can ever take that away from you.”