Violet Blake (known to the world as Lennox Lewis’s mother) died on Thursday, November 30, at the age of 85. Lennox announced her death on social media, describing the loss as “an indescribable pain that shakes me, but also comforts me. know that she is now in a better place, without suffering.”
Violet Lewis (her maiden name) was born in Jamaica on May 10, 1938. Her father was a laborer. Her mother worked as a domestic maid. Violet was one of twelve children. When she was young, she lived with her Aunt Gee. Then Gee got married and Violet was sent to live with another aunt. “I don’t remember ever living with my siblings,” she told Lennox biographer Ken Gorman in 1992. “I hardly knew my father and mother.”
In 1956, Violet moved to London, where Aunt Gee had moved with her husband. She lived with Gee for a short time and then in a rented room while she worked as a nursing assistant. Her first child (Dennis Stephen) was born on April 27, 1962. The father was Rupert Daries; a Jamaican who worked as a swimming instructor in London. Shortly after the birth, Violet returned to work on a night shift at the hospital.
“Rupert was good to us,” she later recalled. ‘I liked him as a brother, but I didn’t love him. You think that if you don’t love him at first, when you live together, maybe you will love him. But it never happened that way.”
Then Carlton Brooks, another Jamaican living in London, came into her life. “We met at a party,” Violet told Gorman. ‘I was madly in love with him, even though we never lived together. It turned out he was married, but I didn’t know it [Brooks had a wife and family in Jamaica]. He never told me he was married. He kept me on the line. When I told him I was pregnant with Lennox, he said, “I’m sorry, Vi. I’m married and I can’t marry you.’ It was a big shock to me. He was the only man I really cared about. It made me very sad.”
Lennox Claudius Lewis was born on September 2, 1965.
“I have fond memories of my youth,” Lennox told me years ago. “In general I was a happy child. My earliest childhood memory is of a rocking horse that I sat on for hours.”
But those pleasant hours became fewer and fewer in between. When Lennox was four, Violet uprooted their home. Still depressed over the loss of Carlton, she decided to start her life over somewhere else. She sent Dennis to live with his father (who was now married), left Lennox with Aunt Gee and moved to Chicago in the hope of setting up a home in the United States for Lennox and herself. But she did not have a valid visa, could not get regular work and returned to England a year later. She then moved to Ontario with Lennox, but sent him back to England after six months. She was still in the throes of depression; the school fees and rent were more than she could afford; and there was barely enough money to feed themselves, let alone a growing boy.
A five-year separation between mother and son followed. Lennox stayed with Aunt Gee and then at two state boarding schools for children who had difficult lives at home.
Meanwhile, Violet took a job on an assembly line at a factory in Ontario. “I cried every day for those five years,” she told me. “They always called me Weeping Willow.” And Lennox remembered their separation thinking, “There was fear. I felt like I was alone there and I missed my mother.”
Finally, in 1977, when Lennox was twelve years old, Violet sent for him. They hadn’t seen each other in five years. She later said of their reunion, “I knew it was him as soon as I saw him at the airport.” He was big, but he had always been big. I had seen him grow in the photos he sent me. I kissed him and kissed him. You know what boys are like when they’re twelve. He didn’t want people to see me kissing him, but I hugged him and kissed him anyway.”
“When we got back together there was such a noise,” Lennox remembers. “Loud happiness. ‘Oh! My baby! My baby!’ She gave me a kiss that lasted so long that I didn’t think it would ever stop. I was a little embarrassed, but I was also very happy to see her and the feeling that came over me was indescribable. There’s something about being around your mother. A mother radiates a special kind of love.”
Lennox would later say, “My respect for my mother has continued to grow as I matured and began to understand what she went through. People ask me, “What place do you consider home?” And I say to them, ‘My mother’s womb.’ When they ask where I’m from, I say, ‘I’m from Violet.’”
Announcing his mother’s death, Lennox wrote: “I have spent most of my life doing my best to honor her and repay her for all the things she gave me in life and for making her life so comfortable make it possible. I am grateful that God let me do this for her.”
That motivation was instilled in him during their years together in Canada.
“When I was young,” Lennox told me years ago, “when I said I was going out, my mother would ask, ‘Where are you going? Who are you going with? Be careful. How do you get home?’ And she always waited for me to come home. I have always found it very important that I not disappoint my mother. I never had a police report. I’ve never gotten a girl pregnant before. Sometimes mother calls me her baby. When your mother says “my baby” it’s different than when your girl says it. When your mother says it, it’s a much deeper feeling. It has more meaning. And I think I’ll always be her baby. It seems like every year on my birthday my mom gives me underwear and socks. And it seems like I need them every year. And when mom’s birthday is almost here, I ask her what she wants. She will never want for anything; I promise you that. But all she ever asks for is something like a winter coat.”
In 2004, after his first child (Landon) was born, Lennox added to this sentiment, saying, “I hope that one day, when my son is a man, he feels as much love for me as I do for my mother. “
Now Lennox has written: ‘Mom, you are gone and I pray you are in a better place. Thank you for the foundation of love, discipline and support that made all my dreams come true. None of it could have ever existed without you, nor would any of it have meant anything without you. I love you forever. Rest now.”
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Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. He has just finished writing a memoir about his own mother, who died last year at the age of 96. My mother and I will be published by Admission Press in spring 2024.