Spokane ‘pioneer’ Sylvester Lake dies

Whenever people ran into Sylvester Lake, they were sure to get three things: a broad smile, a kind word and, always, a piece of candy.

For years, he doled out lemon drops. Then he switched to hard candy with a soft strawberry filling in the middle. He kept bags of them in his car so he could replenish the stash in his pockets.

Known as “the candy man,” Lake was a quiet yet powerful presence among members of Spokane’s black community. Since he moved to the area in 1939, the Tennessee native emerged as a trailblazer, a role model and a leader respected by both young and old.

After battling prostate cancer that had spread through the rest of his body, Lake died Saturday surrounded by friends and family in his north side home. He was 91 years old.

“Daddy was a pioneer in many ways,” said his daughter, Mona Lake Jones, a poet and educator who grew up listening to her father read Langston Hughes aloud. “But above all, he was kind and giving to everybody. Never, in my entire life, did I hear him say an unkind word about anyone.”

Born and raised in the segregated South, Sylvester Lake was majoring in pharmacy at Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., when he decided to move to the Pacific Northwest. He wanted a job and had read about the Grand Coulee Dam project, according to Lake Jones. It was tough for people of color to find work at the time, so Lake – who had always been adventurous and never turned down a challenge – decided to leave everything he knew for a chance at a better life in Eastern Washington.

He was hired to work on the dam and became an expert in operating heavy equipment during the few years he spent at Grand Coulee. After getting settled, he returned briefly to Tennessee to marry Pauline Sims, the girl he had been in love with since grade school. The couple eventually settled in Spokane, where their two daughters, Sylvia and Mona, were born.

After the Coulee Dam project, Lake got a job at Kaiser Aluminum and later became the first black foreman at the company. He retired from Kaiser after 30 years.

“He was the first this and the first that, and Mother was the only this and the only that,” Lake Jones recalled in a 1995 interview about her parents. “When I look back on it, I’m just so amazed that they came out here from a small town where they were segregated and lived among only black people. And for them to be able to come out West here and do well was amazing.”

Throughout his 77 years in Spokane, Lake was involved in a number of organizations including the NAACP, the Northwest Place Pioneers, Toastmasters and the Senior Men’s Golf Club. He also was a 33rd-degree Mason – an honor limited to only the top 5 percent in the Scottish Rite Masonic Order. He never ran out of energy, according to friends and family. In the mid-1940s, Lake established the Orbit Social Club for Teens, which provided black youth in Spokane a place to hang out. During his retirement years in the 1980s, he volunteered at the Eastside Senior Citizens Center, driving other senior citizens who needed help with their errands, as well as at the East Central Community Center’s food bank.

For more than 60 years, Lake also remained devoted to Calvary Baptist Church, where he served as a trustee, treasurer and deacon.

“I found Deacon Lake to be a Christian gentleman, a loving and devoted husband, a family man and a man of wisdom, knowledge and understanding of God’s word and way of life,” said the Rev. C.W. Andrews, longtime pastor of Calvary Baptist.

Whenever the congregation needed inspiration, Lake always got up from the pews to recite a poem that he knew by heart. “He lifted the audience to heights that glorified God,” Andrews recalled.

But Lake was modest and soft-spoken, many said. A “little guy with a big heart,” – in the words of his friend, Jerrelene Williamson – Lake never boasted or criticized. He simply turned the focus on other people, asking about their lives while offering a piece of candy. At church, he was often the one who came up with alternative solutions to problems, Andrews said. “He reminded me of the wise man Solomon from the Bible,” the pastor said.

On the day Sylvester Lake died, his wife and daughter took turns lying by his side, holding his hand and talking to him. Although he could no longer speak, his face often lit up with a smile, recalled Lake Jones, especially when he heard the voices of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren on the phone.

Later in the day, members of Calvary Baptist Church arrived and stood in a circle around Lake’s bed, praying and singing old black spirituals. There was both laughter and tears as they said goodbye to this man who touched the lives of many in Spokane.

At about 9 p.m., as they sang “This Little Light of Mine,” Lake closed his eyes and died.

Sylvester Lake is survived by Pauline, his wife of 68 years; his daughter, Mona Lake Jones; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.