Gloria Jean Eubanks knew sacrifice.
She had 16 kids — 11 boys and five girls — with her late husband Rogers Eubanks, an asphalt paver and auto mechanic.
The couple raised them on the West Side, a stone’s throw from Douglass Park.
“She never gave up,” said her daughter Wanda Jackson, her second-oldest child. “There was times we had little or hardly anything. She never gave any of us away or took us to the shelter. Whatever we went through, we went through together.”
“One day, we were so low on food all we had was a jar of peanut butter, and we all shared it, and my mom didn’t eat a spoonful for herself,” said Chris Eubanks, the 12th child, who is a contractor and actor. “That was when we were younger. Hard times, but things got better.”
Mrs. Eubanks got creative to keep her family fed. Large pots were key. Something was usually boiling in the kitchen.
“Neck bones, beans, rice — filling food, food that sticks to your ribs, no McDonald’s,” said Jackson, a former Salvation Army retail store worker.
“The washing, cleaning, cooking, it’s hard to imagine with that many kids — even when she was sitting down, she was usually helping with homework,” said Richard Eubanks, her fifth child, a bus driver who lives in Kansas City. “She did it with a sense of humor and a lot of prayer, perseverance, sacrifice, hard work, not running from hard situations, always reaching, bravery. I’m very proud of my mother — her ways, her actions, blood, sweat and tears.”
Mrs. Eubanks died June 2 of natural causes, according to her family. She was 77.
“We were raised in the church, we’d read Scripture, and my mother would ask us questions, and we’d get snacks if we knew the answers,” Chris Eubanks said. “People knew our family in the neighborhood. They knew if they picked a fight, they had to fight a dozen or more of us. But we were nice kids. We weren’t mess-starters. We weren’t raised that way.”
Mrs. Eubanks oversaw household spelling bees, passing out treats for the correct answers.
When her children misbehaved, an arresting glance usually did the trick.
”She had a look, and you knew to straighten up,” Jackson said.
Mrs. Eubanks excelled academically and graduated from Crane High School early, at 16, then enrolled in nursing school at Malcolm X College. She got married and started having kids before finishing her degree.
Why such a big family?
“I kind of wonder that myself,” Jackson said. “I guess it just turned out that way. She always loved children. And God meant it to be, I suppose.”
Mrs. Eubanks enjoyed writing poetry. She would offer a few lines as birthday gifts. And she mailed poems to Oprah Winfrey and former President Bill Clinton. She got thank-you notes from the White House.
Mrs. Eubanks regularly met with disbelief after telling people the size of her household, often cramped with as many as four boys sleeping in the same room.
“What! No! How?” were common reactions.
“She’d say, ‘I just do like any mother would do: Keep them fed and clean with a roof over their heads,’ ” Jackson said.
Her children said Mrs. Eubanks never complained, stayed positive, refused to allow street slang to be spoken inside her house and insisted that her children carry themselves in a respectful manner.
“She showed us the way of God, how to love, be kind, help others,” Jackson said. “I watched her do the same to everybody and anybody that she could, not just family, expecting nothing in return. And we are all like that. It’s in our blood.
“And she never judged people. We all have our ups and downs, and she never tried to make you feel guilty or bad about mistakes, ‘You can do better, change; life goes on,’ she’d say. And it was a message that resonated with her kids and grandkids.”
Mrs. Eubanks raised her family mostly in a house and an apartment near Douglass Park. She later moved into a five-bedroom apartment in the Stateway Gardens public housing complex before moving to the Far South Side. She most recently lived with relatives in Iowa and Missouri.
Mrs. Eubanks is also survived by 11 other children: Rogers, Larry, Darrick, Rosalind, Jerry, Keith, Tashika, Jermell, Finese, Mark and Timothy; 73 grandchildren; 66 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
