Revision as of 04:15, 12 April 2012

Corrine A. Huff lived an extraordinary life of triumphs and disappointments. She was a beauty with an outgoing personality. Her early achievements were followed by what appeared to be glamorous opportunities, but were to some degree unfortunate entanglements.
Her grandmother Gladys was raised on a farm in western Pennsylvania, and married into a business family living in town, moving up in the world. Gladys and husband Branfield Sheffer had two children, son Branfield Jr., and daughter Dorothy, (Corinne's mother). Successive tragedies struck the young Sheffer family as first the father and then the mother died before Dorothy was four years old. The orphaned children were housed by various aunts, and when Dorothy was six years old, her brother also died, drowned while playing in the Allegheny River. She was moved from place to place out west with the Wonderlings, (a Sheffer aunt & her husband), and eventually her grandfather Sheffer tried to raise her, keeping her from becoming a ward of the state, although by that time she was beyond his abilities to guide her. Dorothy, no doubt much traumatized by events of her childhood and suffering from the instability of shifting caregivers, began at age sixteen an unfortunate series of three failed marriages. To this damaged mother, Corrine was born.
Between Dorothy's first and second marriage, daughter Corrine was born the child of a liaison with a Mr. Huff, a man whose heritage purportedly included among others Scottish, Black, and possibly Native American strains. In the American culture of the forties and fifties, this meant that the Huff family were automatically regarded as of the Black race.
Corrine was not raised by either of her parents, but by Mr. & Mrs. Russell Huff, he being an attorney and the brother of her father. She was possibly adopted by them, as one newspaper reports her as living with "her parents". Corrine lived with the Huff family in New Castle PA where she graduated from high school. The family, or perhaps only Corrine, then lived in Youngstown, OH where she enrolled at Youngstown University, studying to be a teacher.
At age 19 she became Miss Ohio, the first Black woman to compete in a major national pageant. She had been initially the runner-up in this contest until the first place contestant was disqualified and Corrine was promoted to first place. In the spirit of the times, she received hate messages in connection with entering this competition and earning this title. The lifetime effect of this early mixture of achievement and denunciation can only be guessed at. She fulfilled the expectations of her Miss Ohio title by entering the Miss U.S.A. contest, where she was also a semi-finalist.
She became a secretary to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who represented Harlem, NYC, from 1945 through 1971, and was the first Black man from NY elected to the U. S. Congress. As chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, Powell was instrumental in passing social legislation during the administrations of presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Residents of Harlem took pride in Powell's representation and accomplishments. There was a darker side however. Despite Powell's three marriages, Corrine reportedly became his living companion, enjoying with him jaunts to Europe and elsewhere. He was accused of extravagance and high living at government expense and eventually faced more than one investigation on various charges of corruption and money-laundering practices based in the Bahamas.
Corinne at age 28 married Powell's Bimini-based fishing-boat captain, 25 year old Patrick Brown, but the marriage was brief.
Apparently, some of the money investment in the Bahamas was done in Corrine's name or through a company supposedly owned by her. In her final years however, she reported the funds to have been reclaimed by others. She died in 2006 bereft of access to monetary support.
She was unknown to her mother's side of the family except for her step-siblings until some years after her death. This researcher deeply regrets not having known this complex woman. Her early beauty can be seen in the Aug. 4 1960 issue of JET magazine, where she appears in a swimsuit pose typical of the era's contest entrants. There and in online photographs she strikingly resembles her maternal grandmother Beulah Gladys Kline. See http://www.geocities.com/missusamagica2/MU1960Delegates.html

Ancestry chart segment

 "Generation 1"          "Generation 2"                "Generation 3"            
 
                                                         
                                                         
                                               +-- Beulah Gladys Kline   
                                               |   (1890-1925)                 
                   +-- Dorothy Kline Sheffer --+                             
                   |   (1918 - ????)            |                                   
                   |                           +-- William Otis Branfield Sheffer
 Corrine A. Huff --+                               (1887-1922)
                   |
                   |
                   +-- unknown Huff

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