Longtime Contributor vendor Carol June Potts, who also wrote and did art in the paper, passed away on Oct. 14 after a battle with cancer. She was 66.
“A mixture of sadness and admiration well up in me when I think of June,” said Cathy Jennings, The Contributor’s executive director. “Her recent struggle with cancer, her determination to get to her spot and see her customers and sell her papers, despite her treatment, and her quiet courage to just live her life.”
June wrote a series for the paper about a mouse that lived in her apartment that she decided to make friends with. Her humor and kindness always came through in her writing, but she never wanted to be in the spotlight. She could always be counted on for a wink at the right moment to let you know she was watching.
“She was one of the quiet people that live in our midst, whose absence will probably felt stronger than her presence,” Jennings said. “Breakfast on Wednesday has an empty spot for June.”
June was the daughter of the late Silas Junior Potts and Blanche Marie Marks. She was survived by her children James Robert Bures and Amanda Marie Bures, along with several grandchildren. June is also survived by siblings Michael Potts, Joyce Robinson, Gale, Payne, Betty Potts, Darcy Rhoad and the late Gladys Burke and Darin Potts.
Dear June, a letter from a Contributor founder,
Thank you. You helped open my heart again just by being you.
Since the pandemic, vendor deaths have been an especially hard subject for me. As a founder of The Contributor, one of the burdens of leadership has been to be there when vendors pass away, or rather to be left behind and to have to move on.
No one may even have noticed my silence here. Our staff has picked up the mantle, covering their deaths in the paper. A cloud of witnesses, of contributors-to-society, have left us and when I didn’t have the words to share our deep and remarkable staff did a dignifying job of being there to tell their stories. Meanwhile I was mute, typically without words to describe their effect on me.
As a part of the city’s collection of non-profits known as continuum of care for housing our most vulnerable residents, death notices come frequently down the pike — 123 names have come since 2020.
June, you knew many of them. Two worked with you right here on her Belmont Blvd. Small world.
Anthony Gunter worked for a while just a stone’s throw from your spot at Martin’s BBQ. He picked the spot because of the pandemic. Martin’s was offering to go food as fast as it could to save its business. Anthony did the same, offering the paper on the sidewalk near their outdoor operation. They were like oil and water, and you, June, got an earful of how that didn’t work.
Larry Burrus died of cancer a year ago after years of stoic work down the street at the end of Belmont Blvd. Larry was a U.S. Navy veteran and former worker at CSX railroad before he came to us to make ends meet in his old age. He had a walker toward the end of his life and never seemed to complain. His customers missed him dearly after his passing.
I was sad to learn you had cancer, too. It is my job to train vendors to sell the paper and to help them sell it as long as they want or need to. I set goals for them, and sometimes I think I use those goals to help keep them alive. You were definitely one of those, not that you really needed my goals to get up and get going. When you were sick, you had customers like Karen, who works at the Belmont Bi-Rite, who would bring you to the office, or you would ask me to bring you papers on my way home. When I visited you in the hospital when you had a blood clot in your lung, you asked me to give Karen the keys to her subsidized apartment in Edgehill so she could get your things before you were released. The last time I heard from you, you were doing the same, you had called the day before you passed asking for more papers.
At the funeral I met your family, your daughter and saw some familiar faces. One was David, who I used to strike up conversations with at the now closed P.M. on Belmont Blvd., and there was Nick Miller. I had never met Nick before, but he told me he had tried to start a street paper in Houston, Texas, after he had seen what we were doing here. Small, small world.
On All Saints Sunday at The Downtown Presbyterian Church, I mentioned your name, June, and Bronson Hunter’s name as members of our community who passed on along with the likes of Jean Prueher, who as a single mom raised a son to become the US Commander of the Pacific Fleet and eventually the US Ambassador to China (a.k.a A Navy guy like Mr. Burrus).
Thank you, June, for worming your way into my heart. My daughter remembers you too, from our detours from the school pick-up line to bring you papers and give you rides to the Bi-Rite. I miss you. You helped a broken man become more whole.
Sincerely,
Tom Wills