Charles Lee McDonald, Jr., 78, Hamlet, NC passed on Friday, June 21, 2024.  Funeral will be held at 12:00 pm on Tuesday, June 25, 2024, at Leak Street Cultural Center, 1004 Leak Street, Rockingham, NC. Public viewing, Monday, June 24, 2024, 12:00 pm until 5:00 pm at Nelson Funeral Home 1021 E. Washington Street, Rockingham, NC. The family will receive friends and visitors at 104 McLean Street, Hamlet, NC.  Nelson Funeral Service is serving the family. 

Obituary

Charles Lee McDonald, one of Rockingham, North Carolina’s most beloved citizens, was universally known as “Chan.” 

The perpetually dapper, charismatic man who oozed charm, derring-do and good humor with every fiber of his being, died at his home on June 21, 2024.

He was 79, just six days short of his 80th birthday when he joined the ancestors and the Lord at 11:40 a.m.

Chan was born June 27, 1945, in Fayetteville, North Carolina to Charlie Everett and Leola McDonald.

Chan grew up with his parents and older sister, Clorinda Ann McDonald in Rockingham, North Carolina, where he attended the all-Black, Leak Street School, and graduated in 1964.

Sixty years after his graduation, Chan still had a tattered copy of The Lamp, his high senior yearbook.

Its leather-embossed, dark blue and gold-colored cover is faded now, and a thick strip of gray duct tape holds the book spine together.

Chan came of age during the Civil Rights Movement, a period of momentous change for Black Americans, indeed all Americans.

In tribute to such transformative events, and especially with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Leak Street Lamp’s theme in 1964 was “Freedom.” 

Consider:

Chan and his classmates at Leak Street High were eyewitnesses to history during their final year of school. On June 12, 1963, the summer before their senior year, the civil rights leader, Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi that year.

The new school year had barely started on August 28, when 250,000 people who were sick and tired of being sick and tired, participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his immortal “I Have a Dream,”

Less than a month later, on September 15, four little Black girls were killed while attending Sunday School at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Progress, although incremental, held out the promise of hope. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The Whites Only signs of segregation were the norm. But in the face of systemic discrimination established to make Black Americans feel like second class citizens, Rockingham’s Black community persevered and even thrived with a unified purpose.

East Washington Street, the Black community’s economic and residential corridor was bustling with social activity, community and commerce. Leak Street High School was like a glittering city on the hill, where generations of young people were educated by teachers who were also their neighbors and cared deeply about their futures. 

The Street’s businesses and churches, including Gene’s Cleaners, Kings Grocery Store, Rush’s Barber Shop, Malloy’s Beauty Shop, Nelson Funeral Home, along with the Mt. Pigsah A.M.E. Zion Church, all took out ads in the yearbook and nearly 400 community members contributed too.

Leak Street High School in 1964, under the leadership of its principal, J.C. Watkins, prepared its students to make positive contributions to their community and the greater society with teachers who are now revered, including Mrs. Cora Hodge, Mrs. Sarah Hamilton, Miss Dorothy Wall, Rev. J.F. Sawyer, Mr. Louis Broadnax, Coach James E. Hand, and Mrs. Maggie Beard.

Leak Street High played an important role in Chan’s development and sense of identity. He was a popular student; a bit of a lady’s man, a sharp dresser and athlete who played on the school basketball team.

Chan and fellow classmate Delores McInnis were voted “Most Versatile.” They took a picture together at the flagpole on the school’s front lawn, holding tennis rackets.

Maybe it was because the Vietnam War was raging by 1964. Perhaps they were inspired by the Tuskegee Airmen; Chan and his fellow teammates, James “Peaches” McDonald and Charles “Mitch” McLendon all wanted to be military pilots.

That didn’t quite happen for Chan. Years later, he would joke:

“Uncle Sam asked," Will I fight for my dear old country? " I said, ‘I live in the city limits.’”

Following graduation, Chan married the girl next door, Gladys Sturdivant, who was a Leak Street High cheerleader and majorette.

He found a job driving a truck for a distributing company. Chan and Gladys’ youthful union produced two children, Charles and Melissa. 

By the end of the 1960s, Chan moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for decades with the Washington Gas Company. While living in the District of Columbia and Maryland, Chan refined an old-school elegance that was readily evident in his sense of style, dress – the man would be clean in a sweatsuit– all defined by a confident swagger and the succession of beautiful, spotless Cadillacs that he cruised around in.

Anytime Chan came home to Rockingham, the sun shone a little brighter, the sky seemed a little bluer, and the grass was a little greener.

He returned home in the early 2000s, and purchased a home in Hamlet, North Carolina with his wife, Elaine.

Chan spent the final decades of his life enjoying his grandchildren, golfing, traveling, enjoying his lifelong friends, attending family gatherings, renewing his membership with Providence Baptist Church where he sang in the men’s choir and supporting the Leak Street Education and Cultural Center.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Elaine McDonald, father, Charlie Everett McDonald, stepmother, Doris McDonald, the mother of his oldest children, Gladys Sturdivant, his sister, Clorinda Ann Floyd, and brother, Donald Everette McDonald.

He is survived by his son, Charles G. (Kim) McDonald of Hamlet, daughter, Melissa (Herb) Graham, of Rockingham; son, Charles N. Scott of Washington, D.C.; Edsel (Rosalind) McDonald, of Hamlet; brother, Thomas “Tommy” McDonald of Durham, sister, Kimberly (Roger) Cooper of Ellerbe, brother Tony (Darcell) McDonald of Charlotte, brother Andre (Yvette) Easter, of Baltimore, Maryland and sister, Yvonne Holmes, also of Fayetteville, NC.

Chan leaves behind seven grandchildren to cherish his memory: Ebony McDonald, Brittney Kline, Shiquarl McDonald, Marquise Graham, Xavier Harris, Rashad McDonald and Riley McDonald.

He also leaves behind a host of cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and a near-countless number of friends and admirers.

As only Chan could say it, “I got leave this address, fast, fast, fast.”

We loved him so much, and Chan loved his community, tradition and all our personal histories. That’s why he managed to hold onto that high school yearbook, some for 60 years.

Even as we celebrate his legacy in the days and years to come, his memory will become even more burnished in our hearts, and Charles Lee “Chan” McDonald will be missed.

He was one of the most magnificent human beings who ever lived.