ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602060021
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SEATTLE
SOURCE: DAVID FOSTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
HE ROSE FROM A COACHMAN in Mississippi to patriarch of a successful family in Seattle.
Today, he is a family legend. In 1888, at age 18, John Thomas Gayton was asking for trouble.
He was smart, proud, ambitious - qualities that could get a black man lynched in the cotton country around Yazoo City, Miss. They had already come for his brother, and J.T. was worried they might come for him.
Then the white doctor who employed him as coachman announced he was heading West to a muddy frontier town called Seattle. Would J.T. like to come along?
J.T. Gayton never looked back.
Four children, 17 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren later, these sons and daughters of a pioneer kept on pioneering. Attorneys, athletes, professors and entrepreneurs, they trace a century of black achievement. All credit their successes to the patriarch who mapped the way.
Take pride in yourself and your race, J.T. would say. Serve your community.
And above all, never forget you're a Gayton.
Those early years in Seattle, Gayton worked as a servant, house painter, barber.
In the mid-1890s, he hired on as a waiter at the Rainier Club, an exclusive gathering spot. By 1901, he was head steward.
The way he carried himself - shoulders back, chin up, the hint of a knowing smile on his face - won him notice. In 1904, a judge hired him as bailiff at Seattle's new U.S. District Court, and he stayed there 40 years, eventually promoted to court librarian.
Young attorneys sought J.T.'s advice before approaching the stern federal judges. Italian immigrants asked him for help in studying for citizenship exams. He would invite them home, drilling them on the Constitution.
But there was another side to J.T. Gayton that few whites saw - the storyteller with a keen wit, a boisterous laugh and a way of drawing people into his circle.
Weekends, the Gayton home was filled with visitors. There were bridge games in the parlor and dances in the basement, where J.T. would lead the quadrille.
He became a powerful figure in Seattle's black community, helping to found the city's First African Methodist Episcopal Church.
He was even more powerful within his family. By example and by admonishment, he set clear and absolute rules for daughter Louise and sons John, James and Leonard.
A Gayton does not take handouts. A Gayton is not seen on Jackson Street. A Gayton works hard, goes to church and gives to the community.
Magnolia, a few inches taller and many decibels quieter than her husband, had her own way of teaching her children. Black peddlers would go door to door in those days, selling books about blacks, books the library didn't carry. Magnolia always bought them, then made sure her children read them.
John Jacob Gayton, born in 1899, began the Gaytons' second generation in Seattle. He was the first baby baptized in the church his father helped establish.
More than any other child, John J. took the importance of family to heart. He and his wife, Virginia, raised eight children: Guela, Sylvia, John C., Gary, Philip, Carver, Leonard and Elaine.
During the Great Depression, John J. worked two or three jobs at a time - anything to stay off the dole. He was a janitor, a waiter, even a dogcatcher
John and Virginia Gayton believed in the American Dream, even when America was not ready to share it with blacks.
In 1938, they wanted a bigger home for their growing brood. They found an ideal house - except that it was in Madrona, an all-white neighborhood.
Virginia, relatively fair-skinned, dealt with the real estate agent, but when the whole family moved in, their race was obvious. Windows were smashed. A neighbor offered them twice what the house was worth, just so they would move away. They stayed put.
The children of John and Virginia recall few conflicts once the neighbors got to know them. The boys had permission to fight anyone who called them names. With five brothers, each instructed to stick up for the other, they didn't have to fight often.
Virginia, who had studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C., told her children stories about accomplished blacks. John brought home black newspapers such as The Pittsburgh Courier and The Chicago Defender, and the family would discuss them over dinner.
Carver once came home from school with a story that sent his mother through the roof.
His history teacher had told him slavery wasn't all bad, noting that his own slave-owning grandfather once went clear to Canada to find a doctor for a valued slave.
Virginia marched into the school.
``That slave might have gotten medical attention,'' she lectured the teacher. ``But they'd give their prize horse or cow the best attention, too. They were all property - horse, cow, and slave.''
At school, the children were told by counselors they would make good clerks or secretaries. At home, John and Virginia would ask, ``Have you ever thought about being a doctor or lawyer?''
The view from 30 stories up is impressive, even on a rainy Seattle day. The clouds hang just above the window of Gary Gayton's law office.
One wall is covered by certificates of Gary's academic and legal achievements. The other is crowded with photos: Gary partying with Sugar Ray Leonard, Gary talking to John Wayne, Gary behind President Carter at a White House bill-signing ceremony.
All eight children of John and Virginia Gayton attended college, and five have advanced degrees. The ranks of this third generation of Seattle Gaytons include a college librarian, a professor, two Boeing executives and a high school teacher. Philip Gayton owns two nursing homes.
``We were brought up with no inferior feelings,'' Gary says, his foot propped up on his desk, his hand clutching a bottle of sparkling water. ``We all grew up with a sense of pride in who we were.''
It wasn't always easy for others to figure out who the Gaytons were.
``Gaytons: Troublemakers, Or What?'' read the headline of a 1970 profile of Gary and Carver in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
At the time, Carver had recently resigned from his job as the University of Washington's first black football coach. Hired to help smooth the school's rocky relationship with black athletes, he quit after several black players were kicked off the team for refusing to take a loyalty oath.
Gary, meanwhile, was an attorney in private practice whose clients included those ``troublesome'' black UW athletes, as well as local members of the Black Panthers.
Whites regularly called his office with threats so frightening that one secretary quit. > J.T. and Magnolia Gayton died in 1954.
The second generation is all gone, too.
Guela, oldest of the third generation, is the Gayton matriarch.
She lives in a neighborhood of manicured yards, in a white house overlooking Lake Washington. In her living room sits a Victorian love seat from her grandparents' house.
She remembers how it felt to sit in that seat as a young girl, wearing her Sunday dress, swinging her legs, eating her grandmother's pound cake and watching as the grown-ups sang and laughed.
``With family, you feel secure,'' she says. ``When I was young, I knew my folks were coming home for me. I know a lot of youngsters today who don't have that. It's so sad.''
Her brother Carver thinks a lot about such things, too.
He's 57 and has three grown children, but recently he started family life again with his second wife, Carmen. They have a 5-year-old boy, Chandler
Carver worries about his son inheriting a city in which gang violence grows younger and more deadly each year, a nation in which blacks still earn less and go to prison more than whites.
Chandler will not want for money. But Carver says he can pass something more precious to his son.
He'll never forget he's a Gayton.
LENGTH: Long : 152 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. Chandler Gayton, 5, represents the fourthby CNBgeneration of Gaytons in Seattle since J.T. Gayton, grandfather of
Chandler's dad, Carver, left Mississippi in 1888. color. 2. John T.
Gayton\His heirs continue to prosper. 3. John J. Gayton\Believed in
American Dream. 4. Magnolia Gayton\Children read black history.