Flores Marmon(1928-2007)
- Actress
Florez Kathy Sledge, 79, mother and business manager of Philadelphia's sensational Sister Sledge, whose Grammy-winning "We Are Family" became a mantra for togetherness, died of a stroke at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. Mrs. Sledge had lived in West Philadelphia before moving to Phoenix 10 years earlier.
Born Florez Kathy Williams, the eldest daughter of an opera singer Viola Beatrice Hairston and a laborer. Floyd Moorman. , she left Youngstown, Ohio, after high school. She immediately began singing and dancing in Harlem clubs and played bit parts in movies, said daughter Kathy Lightfoot.
She had a daughter, Norma Carol Blackmon, before marrying Edwin Sledge in 1954. The couple moved to West Philadelphia and had four daughters, each one year apart, before divorcing in the mid-1960s.
Mrs. Sledge's four younger daughters began singing at churches and civic events as children.
"We were always singing. We sang when we jumped rope, we sang when we played jacks," Lightfoot said. "Our mother and grandmother taught us four-part harmony and encouraged us."
Mrs. Sledge, who worked three jobs to support her family, told her daughters they had been gifted. "She read our palms and made us feel special, through good times and bad," Lightfoot said.
Mrs. Sledge was a firm disciplinarian, but fun.
"It was like having Mary Poppins as a mother," her daughters said. "She dressed us up and took us for rides through pretty neighborhoods and said someday we would live in houses like that."
Born Florez Kathy Williams, the eldest daughter of an opera singer Viola Beatrice Hairston and a laborer. Floyd Moorman. , she left Youngstown, Ohio, after high school. She immediately began singing and dancing in Harlem clubs and played bit parts in movies, said daughter Kathy Lightfoot.
She had a daughter, Norma Carol Blackmon, before marrying Edwin Sledge in 1954. The couple moved to West Philadelphia and had four daughters, each one year apart, before divorcing in the mid-1960s.
Mrs. Sledge's four younger daughters began singing at churches and civic events as children.
"We were always singing. We sang when we jumped rope, we sang when we played jacks," Lightfoot said. "Our mother and grandmother taught us four-part harmony and encouraged us."
Mrs. Sledge, who worked three jobs to support her family, told her daughters they had been gifted. "She read our palms and made us feel special, through good times and bad," Lightfoot said.
Mrs. Sledge was a firm disciplinarian, but fun.
"It was like having Mary Poppins as a mother," her daughters said. "She dressed us up and took us for rides through pretty neighborhoods and said someday we would live in houses like that."
