Beyond 9/11: Life and Legacy of Joan Donna Griffith - A Conversation With My Father, Peter Griffith
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Peter Griffith was born in Barbados, and in junior high school, he emigrated to Brooklyn, New York. He was married to Joan Donna Griffith for 20 years before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 stole her life. Together, they raised two children, Paula and Joann. He is an avid photographer, bird enthusiast, and enjoys science fiction. He also likes to draw, journal, and occasionally smoke a cigar.
In this episode…
Leaders and successful professionals are molded by their mentors and those who support them along the way. For many, no figures are as essential and as beloved as parents. They shape us, and we often follow in their footsteps. As we progress in our careers, we look back and pay our respects to those who influenced us the most.
Paula Edgar’s mother was a foundational part of her life. Joan Donna Griffith helped Paula develop as a person and a motivated professional. In her own right, Joan was an accomplished assistant VP and office manager and an admired figure in her community. Unfortunately, she was a victim of the 9/11 attacks, which left her family grieving but also to keep in their memories. Paula’s father, Peter Griffith, is here to share Joan’s legacy and how she impacted many people’s lives.
In this special episode of Branding Room Only, Paula Edgar is joined by her father, Peter Griffith, to celebrate and remember Paula’s mother, Joan Donna Griffith. They talk about how Peter and Joan met, their introduction to the United States, and how they started a family. They dive deep into Joan’s legacy, who she was, and how she is missed.
Mentioned In Beyond 9/11: Life and Legacy of Joan Donna Griffith - A Conversation With My Father, Peter Griffith
A Tribute to My Mother Joan Donna Griffith
Angela Titus | Attorney who helped the family navigate the estate process
Sage Software | Paula’s employer during 9/11
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories, strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their personal brands. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Welcome to Branding Room Only. I’m your host, Paula Edgar, and today I’m sharing a very special episode as part of our Branding Room Only and Rewind Series. This episode is deeply personal to me as I share a conversation with one of the most influential people in my life, my father, Peter L. Griffith.
In this episode, we delve into his journey from Barbados to Brooklyn and reflect on our family history, including the incredible impact of my mother, Joan Donna Griffith, who we lost in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.
Her legacy continues to inspire us every day, and I’m honored to have this opportunity to share her story and celebrate her life. My father’s insights and memories helped paint a picture of who my mother was beyond the tragedy, highlighting her intelligence, resilience, and the love she poured into our family. I hope this conversation gives you a deeper understanding of the influences that have shaped my personal brand and life. Thanks.
Hi, everybody. It’s Paula Edgar, host of Branding Room Only, and I’m excited today to be doing a special episode of the podcast featuring one of the people who has shaped my brand, had me become an influencer, and influenced my life. I’m so excited to be talking to my father, Peter L. Griffith on today’s podcast. Daddy, introduce yourself to the Branding Room Only audience.
Peter Griffith: Hello, everyone. My name is Peter L. Griffith. I was born in Barbados. I came to the United States when I was 14 years old. It’s a long story. By the way, the book won’t be out for a while.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, that’ll be the next episode. Where did you come to when you got off the plane from Barbados?
Peter Griffith: Coming into JFK dressed up in a jacket and a tie and slacks and looking out the window and seeing the swimming pools because the plane came over Long Island and seeing the blue of the swimming pools and all the backyards and stuff, I was finally in America, the great country.
It was a wonderful sight. It didn’t match the house that I ended up going to in what was then Ocean Hill Brownsville—I think that was what it was called—634 Chauncey Street, to be exact.
The first thing that hit me was the smell of the house. It smelled. I’ve never experienced a smell like that before because it was just different from what I expected. Well, not what I expected, but what I was accustomed to in the Caribbean.
Paula Edgar: Just for the audience’s sake, the address that Dad just gave was in Brooklyn, which is, I think, the most important part of this, which is the best borough. You all know that I am not at all shy about the fact that I love Brooklyn, and it’s my favorite borough. Growing up in Brooklyn, as a teenager, you then went to high school and East New York.
Peter Griffith: No, I went to junior high school first. I’ve been to junior high school, IS-271, John M. Coleman, I think, high school on Herkimer Street, and Ocean Hill Brownsville is what they called it then.
I graduated from junior high, which was a horrendous experience for a Barbadian kid with a very thick accent, who was brought up in schools that required you to raise your hand when you wanted to speak and you had to call the teacher sir and ma’am and stuff like that and then go into a junior high school where it seemed like chaos because the kids were just wild. But it was a pretty horrific experience for me.
Kids can be very mean, especially when you’re different. I was very different. So leaving junior high school, high school was a dream. The kids were more civilized. I met a lot of other kids who were from the West Indies also. I no longer felt alone because I felt very alone in junior high school because the people who were West Indian weren’t identifying themselves as West Indian.
Paula Edgar: But interesting because when you think about,—and I always try to tie things back on the podcast to what your brand is—to think about how popular the Caribbean experience is now versus back then when you were just in another group of immigrants that were coming into this country and having an accent and being different was not necessarily cherished in the way it is now.
Peter Griffith: No, it wasn’t because the kids told me that we were taking their jobs. I didn’t really understand that because my mother worked as a maid. I didn’t understand that at all, but it is what it is. It was difficult.
Paula Edgar: Okay, so then high school?
Peter Griffith: Like I said, high school was a dream. I found myself in junior high school because I started to blossom as a student, something which I was not good at in Barbados. I would say that I was a C-minus student in Barbados. I came into junior high school and found myself doing A work.
I think they put me back a grade, which was the best thing they probably could have done for me. I was unbelievable in junior high school. When I think about my experience in high school, it was wonderful. It was fun.
After my first semester, I had like 86 or 87 average. They asked me if I wanted to join a special program for kids that were doing well. That’s how I joined what was then called College Discovery.
That was really an experience because that meant that I was then with the kids who were really interested in learning all the time. We had double peers in math and English. I think I did pretty well in high school. Only failed one class.
I blamed a young lady whose name was Jacqueline Isaacs. I blame her because she was sitting in the back of the class and I talked to her a lot. I filed the regions, but they could have passed me in the class and they didn’t. That was the only class I failed in high school.
Paula Edgar: This is an interesting revelation because I definitely know that there were times when I was young when I was told that I should not be talking to the back of the class and I should be focusing. But that’s a whole other story. I’ll talk about that in therapy.
Anyway, so then as you progressed through high school, and an interesting piece about you saying that you were in this College Discovery is that, given what the Supreme Court has done recently, that probably would have been considered a program that was a pipeline program leading into college to bring in the city people of color.
Peter Griffith: Basically it was. The interesting thing about it was that they gave us a foundation, but the foundation was not good because when I got to Brooklyn College, I was totally overmatched because the kids that were there knew a whole lot more about lots of different things that I didn’t get, I wasn’t exposed to in high school. But I dragged myself through college and thankfully I graduated. I must say with a degree in history, with a mind in education. Okay.
Paula Edgar: All right, relax. There was a milestone that we skipped, which is me. Everybody, a little preface for what you should and shouldn’t do in high school, is that in the meantime, in the between time, I was born.
Peter Griffith: 27 February.
Paula Edgar: You don’t have to talk about the years, relax.
Peter Griffith: February 14th, can I do that then?
Paula Edgar: There you go. There you go. Valentine’s baby.
Peter Griffith: Yes, yes. It was one of the best moments of my life.
Paula Edgar: For those of you who have not checked into my background or have even heard me talk about how I was raised, et cetera, you should know that my biological mother, obviously, who gave birth to me was who we were talking about who my father was with at that time in high school.
Then we’ll move on to talk about who raised me. I think that’s the crux of what I wanted to get to in terms of this story. Let’s fast forward a little bit. You then had a young child that you had to take care of. Then you had to go to work.
Peter Griffith: My mother had told me that as long as I was in college, she would take care of me in terms of my needs. All of a sudden, here I am with a pregnant girlfriend. I had to go to work. That was a horrible experience. I say horrible in terms of, I should not have been working, I should have just been concentrating on school. But I had to go to work.
I first worked in a factory just trying to find any job I could. I worked in a factory which was horrible. Then I got a job working at a law firm as a clerk and a messenger and stuff like that. I got to see the side of people who were different than me and who looked down on me because of my color. The thing was that I was raised that you were not better than me. Although they might have been lawyers, I didn’t care. I was still Loretta’s son.
Paula Edgar: Side note on that one because I think about, again, bringing it back to branding and being better or not than other people and thinking that way, I remember how important it was for my grandmother, Loretta, who you just mentioned, that we dressed a certain way.
That’s been a straight line for the most part of my entire life because I think that baton was also carried by my mommy, and we’re going to get in talking about her in a minute.
Peter Griffith: Can I interrupt you and say this?
Paula Edgar: Yeah, please.
Peter Griffith: My mother, Loretta, it’s interesting that somebody told me that looking at your pictures online, you remind them so much of her and how she dressed and I was like, “Yeah.”
But I mean she made sure that you had great, great clothes and it was just amazing but she did a lot in terms of helping to raise you obviously because I couldn’t provide for you the way that I would have liked to. She really assisted in terms of making sure that you were well-dressed and looking spectacular.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Obviously, I was young—because she was my grandma—but I was young and I remember her doing two things. One is baking and cooking. The other one was I remember her fixing me.
I had the experience of that Barbados side of my family when I was growing up. But it’s interesting because as I progressed later on, my Jamaican side, which both my biological mother and mommy, who we’ll talk about in a minute, are both Jamaican.
That is a very huge part of the culture that I was cultured in, even though I only went to visit Jamaica when I turned 40. But we’ll talk about that a little bit more. Okay. Now you work for the law firm. Again, because your daughter’s a lawyer, they’re not better than you now.
Peter Griffith: It’s funny that I left high school. Well, when you gave out the information in high school about what you wanted to be, my high school yearbook said, “I want to be a lawyer.”
It’s something that I seriously considered, but low expectations are a horrible thing to have. I wanted that, but I didn’t have a roadmap. I didn’t have somebody to explain to me what it was going to be like.
The difference in my life and yours is that you had me and Mommy who had a roadmap and who could say these are the opportunities that could be available to you and I didn’t and needed it in a sense that Mommy and I think that’s one of the reasons why you were poured into the way you were because especially the fact that you went to Deerfield, that was us pouring into ourselves in a sense because we both would have liked to have had that kind of experience, which is why having you go there was such a proud moment for us.
It killed me in terms of how much it cost. But I look back on it now, I look back on the bills that they sent asking for their money and I think the money was well spent. I could not have expected that you would become the person you were when you left Deerfield.
Because as I go to Deerfield and hear them talk about you, we would look at each other like, “This Paula?” Because we know what you were like at home. You were not like that at Deerfield at all.
You were unbelievable. Everybody seemed to love you. They were like, “Oh, Paula is this and Paula is that.” Who you are now is who you were becoming at Deerfield. Just blooming and just seeing the woman that you were becoming and mommy just absolutely loved that. Of course, I must say that our goal in life was to get you and Joanne out of the house, so we could have the house to ourselves, but that’s beside the point.
Paula Edgar: Now I’ve been taking, again, that baton. Now, me and my husband have one kid out and we wait for the other kid to get out. We love them so much. Anyway, you talked about—and we’ll skip around a little bit—but we started talking about Mommy, but we haven’t said who Mommy is. What I wanted to do is to draw the continual line as to you worked at the law firm and then you worked where and then where did you meet Mommy?
Peter Griffith: I worked at Merrill Lynch which was then Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith at 100 Broadway in Manhattan. You want to know how I met her?
Paula Edgar: Yes, but keep it for the public, please.
Peter Griffith: The office I worked in, I could look down the hallway from where I was sitting and I could see into another office down there. I saw her one day. In fact, I actually saw her on the elevator, and I was taken aback by her obvious good looks and physical qualities.
Paula Edgar: You should have been a politician anyway.
Peter Griffith: I liked her. She was just beaming. There was just something about her. A couple of days after I saw her, we were both coming out of the number five train at the Wall Street stop or whatever the stop was near Wall Street.
As we came through the turnstile, I saw her. I said, “Hi, how are you?” She says, “Hi.” I said, “I’m Peter from Barbados.” She said, “I’m Joan from Jamaica.” Famous lines. Listen, I never said I was the smoothest in the world, but I went out of my way and I spoke to her. I guess we walked to work together, and that basically was it for the beginning of our relationship, talking to each other, whatever.
Paula Edgar: Fast forward a little bit more. You both got married.
Peter Griffith: Before I do this, let me tell you what happened. I was seeing someone at the time, and who should remain nameless. I had a date one night, and we used to work until nine o’clock at night.
Back then, there was a lot of overtime and stuff, and she worked late, and we saw each other in the hallway, and I said to her, “Would you like to go to dinner?” She said, “Sure.”
We went to a place called the China Chalet on Broadway. We sat down and we ate. After that, we went over to Battery Park. We walked around a little bit, and then I said, “Can I kiss you?” She said, “Yes.” We kissed. I turned to her and said, “I’m sure you could do better than that.” That was like one or two. She did better than that and from there we were seeing each other a lot after that.
Paula Edgar: So, fast forward, you get married and you get married in 1981, September 5th and at that point, I was three or four. You then have a new wife.
Peter Griffith: A new wife who was, I think, 19.
Paula Edgar: A new young wife. I wasn’t living with you yet.
Peter Griffith: No.
Paula Edgar: A little bit after that, without going into all of the details, I then moved in with you both.
Peter Griffith: Yes.
Paula Edgar: That must have been easy.
Peter Griffith: No, it wasn’t. It was difficult because her expectation was that she would have her husband and she would enjoy living without the thought of having a child anytime soon and go out and party and stuff.
We weren’t big party people, but having the ability to go where we wanted and stuff that was all done. For me, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I say that because I wanted to raise you because I knew that you were special when you were younger.
You were very conscious of a lot of stuff. You were very smart. I just felt that I could do a good job of raising you and making you the best version of yourself possible. Basically, a mini me, but it’s beside the point. I wanted to give you the education that I had. There was something inside me about education. That was something that drove me. I wanted to be able to give that to you.
As somebody who studied history, I knew I could give you a well-rounded education about life growing up as a Black girl, a Black person in this country, and stuff like that. I wanted to do that.
It was for me a great thing, for her, it wasn’t so much. But when you love someone, you stretch yourself. At some point—obviously, she’s not here to be able to say where that moment came when the light went on with her—it’s just like, “Okay, this is Peter’s child, and we have to deal with this.”
She just embraced you as her own. Embrace you like that big giant hug that you are mine now. That was one of the best things that happened also because then she was no longer your stepmother. Then we told you that you couldn’t call her Donna anymore, you had to call her mommy. Just like that, you started to call her mommy. That’s mommy.
Paula Edgar: That’s funny because I don’t remember. This is the first time I’ve heard you say that I called her Donna. But I guess that makes sense. Just for everybody who’s listening along to pull this through, when I say “mommy”, that’s who I’m referring to because that’s the mommy who raised me.
My mother, Joan Donna Griffith, is who my father married in ‘81. The fact that she was 19 was—as I got older and understood how young she was—I think was a helpful factor in terms of our bonding because she was very playful. It felt seamless and easy.
I remember one of the memories that I have and I was telling my kids about this is how soft her hands were. She would lotion my legs and I would just sit back and be like, “Oh, this is like the best,” without any knowledge of any other way being.
But I remember that. When you think about the things that your mother does, like hugging you and your mother’s touch and cooking and all those things, those are the things that I remember.
I wanted to bring us to this conversation because Mommy, for us, was pretty much everything. The audience and the folks who are listening, and we’ll see this later on, mostly only know who Mommy is because of what happened to her.
We haven’t gotten to that yet, but I want to preface it in that one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation with you is because many people have heard about me. I talk about Mommy all the time.
But I wanted to have the opportunity for us to talk about who Mommy was for us and to put not just story but some depth to her legacy, who she was, and how she added value and left her mark and impact on the world. That’s so important.
We know how you met her. Tell me what some of the favorite memories you had of those early days. A couple would be good. What comes up for you?
Peter Griffith: I think just the fact that she was smart. It’s good to find someone who matches you in terms of your intellectual ability. She was really, really intelligent. She was an avid reader.
We spent many hours together reading. I read in my science fiction. She read in her romance novels. We had really good times. Having a four-year-old means that there’s lots of stuff you can’t do.
But I think the extended family of Juliet, Phyllis, and who are her sisters made it easy because we could always take you over there and they could always babysit. When they want to go out, they can always bring their kids to us.
There was always that sense that there were all these people around. There was always a family situation. But specifically, we went camping, remember just one particular time, just me and her.
We were new to camping and we went to a place called Uncle Pete’ in the Adirondacks, near Kingston, New York. We got up there in my little orange Toyota, Celica. I know you remember that car.
Paula Edgar: Yes.
Peter Griffith: We went up there and we had this little tent. It wasn’t very big and it was pouring. We found someplace that was nice and dry and we set the tent up and everything. This was the first time I think we’d ever really gone camping. It rained like crazy. It rained to the point where it was seeping under the tent. We were wet.
Got up in the middle of the night. I went in the car and slept. The next morning we were like, “Okay, it’s time to go home because this is it.” We drove into Kingston and we found a laundromat.
We drove back to the site and got the tent and this stuff. I took it to the laundromat and washed it and then back and found a dry place and had a really great time. One of the things about her is that she was very affectionate and loving.
Since I’m an affectionate person, we were perfect for each other in that way. We were always hugging each other, always dancing together and just touching each other. It was nothing to be in the kitchen kissing each other and having people tell you to get a room.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. I’ll take a pause there because I grew up in East New York, Brooklyn. That’s where we lived for most of my childhood. A lot of my friends didn’t have a family unit that was together, a husband and a wife.
So my friends would have come over and be like, “A, oh my goodness, your dad’s there. Then B, you all would be hugging all over each other,” et cetera. I think that for so many of my friends, you were their family unit too. It wasn’t just me understanding that that’s who you all were, but them.
Having that structure, whether, sort of adopted or not in that space, was helpful to so many people to see what they want to strive for. I knew from when I was very young that that’s a family unit that I wanted. Obviously, people don’t necessarily want to have fractured family units, but I wanted to have something similar to what you all had.
Peter Griffith: I mean, to the point, you also had Juliet and Phillys who also had a male in the home also. It was something that you saw as a normal. It’s not an abnormal thing. I mean, it was something you talked about, but it was just how it was. To us taking showers together and just–
Paula Edgar: Oh, right, okay. All right, Daddy. Oh, goodness. Anyway, so I want to take a quick sidestep. Mommy was from Jamaica.
Peter Griffith: Yeah. She came to the United States, I think, when she was, I’m not even sure how old she was, but I know she went to elementary school. I think she graduated a year early from [Erasmus].
I think she went to another high school, but she went to [Erasmus] for her last year and was able to come out, I think, a year earlier, or six months earlier, or something like that. Then she went to Florida State.
She was there, I think, for two years when she got ill. She developed Bell’s Palsy, and that’s how she was back in New York. She came to New York for treatment, and while she was here, she got a job. She had a boyfriend in Florida. When I came around, he was gone.
Paula Edgar: Okay, all right. Anyway. This is like turning into a dynasty episode. But anyway, okay. I wanted to just make sure that we made that connection in terms of where she’d come from.
Mommy has three sisters and two brothers, Calvin and Jr., and we talked about Ruth, Juliet, and then they all have a myriad of my cousins who are peppering the world. Because if we did this and did not mention them, we would be in trouble. I don’t want to be in trouble. I hope to be able to do a podcast with my aunts as well at some point.
Peter Griffith: But that would be great.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Okay. We thought about some of our favorite memories. I guess I’ll share a couple as well. I’m glad you mentioned that Mommy loved to read because I lament the fact that now we can read on devices because my kids don’t actually see me holding a lot of books, although I do read a lot as well.
But I was just, this past weekend, at Grand Army Plaza at the library, and it brought back all of these memories. I mean, I was there to see the Jay-Z exhibit, but that’s not the story. But it brought back all these memories of when we used to go there and Mommy would just pack tote bags full of those Harlequin Romances and other romance novels.
She read so, so much. I would see her with a book all the time. Both of you, to your point, about being avid readers, it instilled upon me that reading was something that I had to do because there were just a few times where all of us would be in a room reading.
The other thing is museums and like the places, we did New York stuff. I realized that I don’t necessarily do as much New York stuff and I didn’t do as much New York stuff with my kids because they have opportunities to go other places. We weren’t affluent but we did do a lot of things that were New York-focused.
Then when I was eight, along came my sister, and Joanne was born. Then we had a family structure that was different than I had you both to myself and then we had my sister. That shifted a lot for us in terms of our family unit. Talk a little bit about that.
Peter Griffith: Obviously, it creates a different dynamic because now the focus is no longer on you, the focus is on her. She was in a hospital because she was born two pounds, six ounces.
Paula Edgar: Eight ounces.
Peter Griffith: Okay, two pounds, eight.
Paula Edgar: You’re welcome.
Peter Griffith: She was in the hospital for a couple of months, and that was hard on Mommy because she would go there every day and feed her with a little syringe or whatever. She would come home and sometimes she would cry about it because her baby was in the hospital.
Then she came home and everything changed because now, the focus, like I said, was no longer on you but by then, you were old enough I guess to understand that now you have a little sister to play with or whatever, which I don’t think you particularly liked but kids are funny at that age especially when everything is about them, and now the focus is on something else.
Paula Edgar: Yes, yes, definitely. I remember the shift. But it was interesting because I think at least, and again, I’m thinking of it from obviously my perspective as a young kid, but I felt like for Mommy, it felt like the unit was whole, was more whole because then you both a child of your own.
But to that end, I never in my entire life felt as if I wasn’t her child. It was very much like we did Girl Scouts together, we did all of these things that we did and it was never in my mind any question that I can remember.
Peter Griffith: To the fact that most of your cousins didn’t know that you had a different mother.
Paula Edgar: Yep, yeah. Okay. Then I go away to boarding school.
Peter Griffith: Yes.
Paula Edgar: I went to Deerfield Academy, which my father mentioned a little bit earlier, which is in Deerfield, Massachusetts, which is in Western Mass. It’s a boarding school. You’re living there. I left when I was 14. At that point, was it before? It was right after that, then you all moved to New Jersey.
Peter Griffith: Yes. I don’t know what year you went to boarding school, but we came up here in ‘92.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, it was ‘91.
Peter Griffith: No, we came up here in ‘92. A lot of it was the neighborhood was rarely changing drastically. Mommy was like, “Joanne’s going to start school soon, let’s get out of here.” In a couple of months, we moved up here. That was a big change for us.
Now you’re living in the suburbs and you have to worry about mowing the lawn and all kinds of different stuff. It was difficult because we were commuting every day from Willingboro, which is, I think, 90 miles away from New York or something like that.
Every day to New York, we would get up at ridiculous hours of the morning and have to take the bus into the city. It was difficult because that drive was hard on your body. But it’s something we decided we wanted to do so it wasn’t a matter of we had to, it was a matter of we wanted to do this. So we did.
Paula Edgar: That commute is something that when I think about Mommy reading books, that’s what she would be getting her stop for the week for her and then would read books and then return them back. She would read two or three books like going up and coming back.
Peter Griffith: Yeah, she tore those books up like crazy. She was an unbelievable reader. The thing about it was she would not read anything else. She wouldn’t read biography. She would not read it.
One of the things that people don’t realize about these books is these books, because there is a lot of romance, a lot of them are set in Europe and different places and stuff. That idea of going places in a book, she went lots of places and she knew lots of stuff because she read these books.
I mean, you can think that you don’t gain anything from reading them, but just reading them brings you information that you would not have before about how people live, how you’re supposed to do things. She knew a whole lot about a whole lot of stuff from reading these books.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. I’m sure that that was most of what I saw. But in terms of the knowledge point, she also watched a lot of musicals. She ingested a lot of information in a lot of different ways. A part of what I remember a lot is how we love Mary Poppins.
We loved a lot of the musicals because that’s what we would sit and watch together when I was a kid and when I was older as well, too. I’m thinking about when I was away at boarding school in 1993, Mommy and you all were still commuting to and from New York City, Lower Manhattan to Willingboro, New Jersey.
I remember when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, I remember being pulled out of class, and them saying that the towers had been bombed. I remember being up until late that night and then having a call with you all because she had finally come home.
I remember her talking about going out of the stairs, and her back had hurt and all that stuff. But what I remember the most from that was her saying that she was going to go back.
It wasn’t at night, but it was after that. I remember being like, “Okay, well, they’re bombing stuff, so let’s not go back there.” But I remember specifically having a conversation with her saying that she was going to go back. Tell me about how that was on the adult side when all that happened.
Peter Griffith: Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember much about it. It was just like a blip in our lives. I know coming down all the stairs and stuff was difficult for her. But beyond that, we didn’t really have a conversation about whether she was going to go back or not. At least I don’t remember.
I need you to understand that there’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember because, obviously, since September 11th, there’s been a lot of brain trauma with that, and there’s a lot of memories that I really don’t have anymore.
Paula Edgar: Let’s just tell the truth. Also, that Mommy and I talk together every day and I would–
Peter Griffith: Yeah. Daddy would get a call when the car window wouldn’t go down. Otherwise, Daddy wouldn’t hear from you but Mommy would come home and say, “Yeah, I sent her some money today.”
The thing about it is just like whatever she did with you, she would come home and tell me, “I did this, I did that,” or whatever. So we knew what was going on in terms of how things were going with you and how she might have been helping you or whatever, which has always been a big focus in her life.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. My mother, back in those days, you had to pay per minute when you had calls and long distance, et cetera. But at her job, Mommy worked at Fiduciary Trust in the World Trade Center, she had an 800 number.
I was in boarding school, so I would literally call her every day. They would put me on hold and go find her. I love that. She’d be like, “What do you want?” I’m like, “Just to say hi.” But we would talk and she would tell me what’s going on with the family.
She was really like my lifeline to what was happening otherwise because that was before email and social media and all that stuff so I didn’t really know other than those calls. What I remember about that time was feeling super disconnected because something had happened, but the person who would be telling me about it normally was in it.
That fear that I had because it had happened there. Terrorism was something that happened in other countries. It wasn’t anything that we worried about. We worried about local crime as opposed to crime that was–
Peter Griffith: [Inaudible]
Paula Edgar: Exactly. Let’s fast forward. Well, there’s one question that I think I wanted to hear your thoughts about. We talked about how she was as a mother. I don’t know if you want to add anything else about her as a mother for me and Joanne, et cetera, just generally.
Peter Griffith: Let’s talk about you for a moment and the fact that you wouldn’t get up in the morning unless you had hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was brought to you, I think then we had bunk beds and you would get your hot chocolate with your eyes closed and you would drink the hot chocolate. You would not get up unless you had the hot chocolate.
You do what you have to do in order to get your kids going and we did what we had to do. I mean, she was just so wonderful in terms of how she took care of you and took care of Joanne and made sure everything was okay with the two of you. She was a wonderful person, a wonderful mother.
Paula Edgar: Yes. And she could cook. When I think about the full package of a wife in the traditional roles, she worked and she commuted and she cooked and she cleaned, oh, my goodness.
Peter Griffith: She would come home and have a meal ready in like 40 minutes or something. I would talk to her about this stuff, she could take a recipe and know what to substitute for what she didn’t have or whatever. I couldn’t understand a lot of that stuff, how she did it, how she knew what to substitute out of but she was really good at cooking and baking and stuff like that. She was really a well-rounded person.
Paula Edgar: Yes. To tie into what I was talking about with my grandmother, she also, my mother was very much a dresser.
Peter Griffith: Yes.
Paula Edgar: When I think about how I tell my kids, “Walk outside, look in a certain way,” that when I’m going to do something, I’m speaking, et cetera, that I know that I have to look a certain way, that was a direct connection to how Mommy raised me.
Whether or not I rebelled at some point because we know what I did, I understood and knew what the parameters were and it’s a part of how I built my brand around particularly having a knowledge and understanding of how to show up.
Peter Griffith: You are not going outside like that. Nope. Come back. Come back.
Paula Edgar: There were a lot of comebacks. There were a lot of comebacks, especially when we lived in Brooklyn, but it’s okay. Anyway, actually one anecdote that I remember, speaking of dressing, was that when I went to Deerfield, I was this kid from East New York. But I think we had the lower part of the middle class, but we showed up as a middle and up.
So my mother was like, “You have to have penny loafers. You have to have penny loafers in order to go to boarding school because that’s what they have.” Then people say, “You put pennies inside the penny loafers,” but I remember she was like, “We’ll put two dimes in there so you remember your value.”
I was like, “Why are we putting coins in these shoes?” But when I think about it now, it was like you set a standard, that I was going to be in this place where folks had more resources, knew more but that they were not better than me. That same kind of connection that you talked about before.
I wanted to share that because there are a lot of lessons that I learned when you talk about shaping who I am. Yes, even being right here now is because of the values and the lessons and the things that mommy taught me and that I experienced with both of you as my parents. Okay. Let’s talk about, we talked about her reading, but songs that she loved, quotes, or anything.
Peter Griffith: The thing about her is she loved music from the 60s. We both had a love for like Beach Boys music, Beatles music, and singing around the house, singing out loud, and just enjoying the atmosphere in the house because I played a lot of music.
Because of that, we always had the soundtrack of our lives. It was really something because after she died, I realized how much the music meant to our relationship. It was hard for me to deal with that.
I did a lot of crying at my desk at work, hearing music that touched me because it was music that we shared together. There’s some music now that I’m still not comfortable listening to because it was very special to her and special to me.
She was just, like I said, a wonderful wife. Even better than that, she was a really good friend. She was a really good friend. I mean, when you have somebody who’s as smart as you are, you can’t come with bullshit.
She had that kind of brain where she could take something and break it down and know what to do with it. She was, in many ways, a lot smarter than I was. But it’s Mommy.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. When I think about growing up, the music was a big piece of it. The one song that comes up whenever I think about her song, as opposed to a musical, is Rainy Days and Mondays.
Peter Griffith: Yes, yes. There was something about that, I think, when she was younger. I don’t remember the story behind it, but that song meant a whole lot to her because I think it’s a song that she might have heard or it did something to her. I think she did a lot of cleaning on Saturday mornings to that music. I mean, she was younger so it was something she always liked to hear because it made her feel good.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. I remember her singing it out loud and it’s interesting because now I hear that song and I’m just thinking, “But it doesn’t have the connection other than to her.” It’s not like I don’t have whatever that deeper piece of it is. But there was definitely a lot of music played out loud when I grew up.
The other thing that you used to do all the time was there’s a lot of video of our lives. This was like before there was terabyte mini chips. It was actually a video, like VHS tapes that you would just have the VCR running. Because of that, and I’m grateful for that as being part of who you are, there’s a lot of just video of us being us.
Peter Griffith: Yes. I mean one of the things is because I’m a photographer and you get memories from looking at pictures and one I have in particular is us going to the beach to fly a kite. It’s like the things I wanted for you, the things that I had when I was growing up.
We did stuff that I would have wanted to do or I did when I was young and that was one of the memories that really–I mean she didn’t have to come but if we were going someplace, and that’s another thing too, we were always together, we were together a lot, which is when I think about the fact that we were together for 20 years and five days or six days, we spent a lot more time than that together. You can say it’s 20 years, but it was a hell of a lot more than that because it was packed into those 20 years that we spent together.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Gosh, I just thought about the kites. I can see the pictures. I don’t want to run over that point because I started off saying that you were instrumental in building my brand because you were.
But one of the things I’m very serious about is pictures and how they are framed and how they’re structured and how people look in them. I would say a little bit more than serious about it.
I’m a little bit obsessed with my kids who do not want to take pictures and I don’t care and I’m going to make them take pictures. But I’ve been documented my entire life. I have pictures from when I was a baby all the way.
A lot of people can’t say that. To think about how technology has shifted during that time, that you still, number one, understood the importance of documenting. I look back at those pictures and I think how lucky I am to be able to see them and know throughout those times that it was important for you to do and that is something that I directly attribute to you having that love too that I have the love as well except that I use an Android phone as opposed to an actual camera.
Anyway, I’ll get to it at some point being an actual camera person. There was a lot in there to your point about it being packed. I want to, before we move on to talking about 9/11, when you think about some of the dreams and aspirations that Mommy had, what comes up?
Paula Edgar: I think she wanted to graduate college. I think that was a big thing for her. She did go back. She went to Medgar Evers for a couple of semesters. But it’s tough having kids and trying to go to school at night.
That was difficult, obviously. She never did finish because we moved up here. Then that commute destroyed any chance of being able to go to school because it was basically an hour and a half each way.
But I think the big thing was that she wanted you and Joanne to have a better life than she had because I think her growing up was rough. I think she poured into you and into Joanne the values that she grew up with and the values that we share together, the value in education, value in family, value in fun, value in laughter and reading and really understanding how important education was to your success. That was a big, big deal for her.
Paula Edgar: I know a fact, but every single time you remind me that Mommy didn’t graduate, I’m always like, “What?” I was shocked in my head because education was such an important piece for her.
I remember you all, I was like a latchkey kid, you all going to school at night and going to college so that the point of you all making that effort, whether or not a degree came from it for her, was solidified. Like, I knew that I had to go to college. It was not a question whether I was going to be doing that or not.
Peter Griffith: I think that was drilled into you from early. It wasn’t any choice about going to college because it was always if I could achieve college, you had to pass me in terms of what you did and I’m very happy that you did. That was a big, big, big deal.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Let’s talk about Mommy at work. Other than my connection where I knew a lot of her coworkers because, again, I would call and they knew who I was and they would say how proud they were of the things that I was doing so I knew that she talked about me a lot, then I learned a lot from them after she died, but Mommy would tell me also about the things that were happening at work.
I don’t know how deeply, I should say, she didn’t really talk deeply about some of the challenges or anything like that, but I knew she took a lot of pride in showing up in her job. So how much do you want to add about that?
Peter Griffith: You talk about the dressing. Casual Corners was a store in, I think it was in the World Trade Center, and she would come home with suits.
Paula Edgar: And Learners and Ann Taylor LOFT.
Peter Griffith: She had a ton of suit. It spoke to how she wanted to show up. People saw her, and they saw her what they call dress to the nine. She was always put together because she could always, I mean, okay, this, this, this, and she would always look fantastic.
Going to church on Sunday morning, it was like, wow. She was just immaculate and very purposeful in the way she put herself together and what she showed the world of who she was.
Paula Edgar: A hundred percent.
Peter Griffith: In terms of the work, she rose quickly in the company she was in, despite the fact she didn’t have a degree. What she did have was a brain that was incredible. She caught on to a lot of stuff that a lot of other people didn’t. At one point, she was offered jobs by some of the companies that were servicing her company because she knew the system as good as some of their engineers because she was just that good.
She knew how to manipulate the system in ways that they didn’t know were possible. Like I said, they offered a job, but you can’t do that, especially a job where you go someplace for six months or whatever, you can’t do that when you have a little kid.
That avenue was open to her, but she was very proud of how far she’d come in the company. I think she was always a little mindful of the fact that she didn’t have a degree to say, “This is what I have.” But she was something else in terms of her ability and how she did her job.
I think what we saw at home in terms of somebody who could manage the house and do these things, that was taken to the job. She managed in a really wonderful way that her people absolutely loved her. They cherished her because she treated them really well. In fact, a lot of them are very, very loyal to her because she treated them and gave them an opportunity to grow.
Paula Edgar: Yeah. Yeah, the folks who she worked with, a lot of the things that they said about her subsequently after she died was about how she mentored them and she cared about them personally, not just at work.
I think that kind of impact in the workplace, especially when we think about workplaces now where people don’t stay for long or people leave because the culture is terrible, they say people don’t leave places, they leave people. Until you have someone who really cares about you and your growth, I really love that work ethic that I think, to your point, was home and work. It was seamless in that way.
Peter Griffith: Yes. Yes, it was.
Paula Edgar: Thank you for joining me for this heartfelt Branding Room Only rewind episode. I hope my conversation with my father has given you a glimpse into the legacy of my mother, Joan Donna Griffith, and the profound influence she continues to have on our lives.
A special thank you to my dad, Peter L. Griffith, for his stories and jokes and for sharing stories and memories with us. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will continue to celebrate her life and explore the impact that my mother had on those around her. As always, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and share the podcast. Until next time, take care and stand by your brand.
