Claudelle ‘Cookie’ Cameron, 75, dies

During more than 30 years of teaching elementary school, Claudelle Cooke "Cookie" Cameron, who taught second and third grades, noted that "Sharing Time" just kept getting more interesting.

While she was at Blackwell Elementary School in Richmond from 1971 to 1990, "one student brought in a diamond-encrusted watch he found lying around the house," said her daughter, Karen Milon of Highland Springs. Mrs. Cameron took that home for safekeeping until she could return it to the parent.

Another child brought in a switchblade, "which I'm sure was turned in to the principal," Milon said.

A third student, a second-grader, "brought marijuana and paper to school and proceeded to show the class how to roll a marijuana cigarette," Milon said.

Mrs. Cameron, who retired at Blackwell, was remembered at a funeral Friday at Antioch Baptist Church in Varina. Burial was in Riverview Cemetery.

The Sumter, S.C., native and Henrico County resident died of complications of cancer Sunday at a Henrico hospice center. She was 75.

Reared by her paternal grandmother, she was named for her father, Claude Cooke. She came to Richmond's Jackson Ward as a small child.

"When she graduated from Armstrong High School and Virginia State College, black women had two [career] options," said a son, Dana Evant Cameron of Henrico. "You could teach or work as a nurse. She hated hospitals."

After earning her bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1954, she taught in the Chesterfield County school system, first at Bermuda Elementary School and then at Midlothian Elementary School.

Mrs. Cameron came to the Richmond school system in 1959 as a teacher at George Mason Elementary School. That same year, she transferred to Nathaniel Bacon Elementary School, where her two eldest children later were students.

Having them in the same school "made it difficult for her," Milon said. "When we did anything wrong, instead of sending us to the principal's office, they sent us to her class," which disrupted the class.

Schoolmates teased the Cameron children because their mother taught at Nathaniel Bacon. However, when the children saw these classmates when they became adults, "their first question was, 'How's your mom?' She touched a lot of lives," Milon said.

Outside the classroom, Mrs. Cameron loved to knit and play penuchle and bridge.

Bridge was her favorite. She was a member of the Friendly Bridge Group at the Richmond Bridge Association's Bridge Center. She also played duplicate bridge with the Trump and Diamond bridge clubs.

Her husband, David Earnest Cameron Sr., died in 1998.

Survivors besides her daughter and son include another son, David E. Cameron Jr. of Woodbridge; three half sisters, Rosalyn Frances Forbes of Brooklyn, N.Y., Rosemary Dawson of Chesapeake and Frieda Reese of Richmond; two half brothers, Aaron Stewart and Larry Stewart, both of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and three grandchildren.