Carolyn and Elihu Brayboy have invested heavily in Midtown real estate
By COREY GIVENS JR.
NNB Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – When Carolyn Brayboy went for her annual physical in 2007, she told her doctor she had been feeling a little nauseous.
The doctor referred her to a specialist for tests that led to a dreaded diagnosis: cancer.
For months, Brayboy underwent chemotherapy, which left her weak, exhausted and bed-ridden. But it worked. More than a year after the diagnosis, she was cancer free.
Shaken by her brush with death, Brayboy and her husband, Elihu, decided to take a risk. They invested $800,000 in real estate in the Midtown area of St. Petersburg.
Where some saw rundown old buildings and empty lots, the Brayboys saw opportunity. When some lamented what integration, urban renewal, an interstate highway and crack cocaine had done to a once-thriving neighborhood, the Brayboys remembered the good times of their youth and the values that a close-knit community instilled in them.
Now the Brayboys, both 65, are hard at work restoring four buildings along 22nd Street S, which in its heyday in the 1950s and ‘60s was the main street of a community that its black residents and business owners proudly called “The Deuces.”
In one building, at 909-913 22nd St. S, the Brayboys have installed an art gallery, a consignment shop and an ice cream parlor, which was inspired by their three young grandchildren.
In another building, at 901-903 22nd St. S, they will have a restaurant called Chief’s Creole Café featuring many recipes of Elihu Brayboy’s mother. It is scheduled to open in a few weeks.
Nearby, at 951-963, is the historic Merriwether building. The Brayboys plan to put more shops on the ground floor of the two-story, 1925 building and low-cost housing on the second floor.
The fourth building is at 1025, where daughter Ramona Brayboy-Reio and her husband have a hair salon and fitness center.
In an area like Midtown, the crime rate tends to be high and poverty levels even higher. The Brayboys say they knew they were taking a risk by investing there. But their experience has been positive.
“We know that we have to remain prudent of our surroundings no matter where we are, but in the six years we have been here, not once have we had a break-in, a single item stolen, or a broken window,” Elihu Brayboy said.
To outward appearances, the Brayboys are an odd couple. He is outgoing and talkative. She is reserved, reticent. He favors leopard print jackets and silk shirts with initials monogramed on the cuff. She is more likely to be in jeans, clambering up a ladder to help the roof repair guys. She’s good with her hands and watches expenditures closely – a good thing, he says with a chuckle, since budgeting is not his strength.
Unlike other business developers in Midtown, the Brayboys are not new to the area.
They both grew up in Midtown. “My mother was a nurse at Mercy (Hospital) and my father worked at Clark Funeral Home, which was one of the only black funeral homes at that time,” he said.
His strict upbringing in a close-knit community instilled in him values that he has carried throughout his entire life. “I remember my next door neighbor, Mr. Anderson, got me my first job bussing tables at a restaurant in Seminole. I saved my money to buy the things I needed, not the things I wanted.”
Brayboy was in the second group of black students to desegregate Bishop Barry High School (now St. Petersburg Catholic High) in 1962. His skills as a football player there earned him a scholarship to attend Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, where he joined Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., a prestigious accomplishment in the black community. During the career that followed, he has been a stockbroker, math teacher, mortgage broker and small-business developer.
He started his business career in New Orleans, where he spent several years in the 1970s. But family obligations brought him back to St. Petersburg in 1977.
Brayboy said it was local leaders like attorney Frank Peterman Sr. and Judge James B. Sanderlin who inspired him to come back and make a difference in the community that he once called home.
“I could have gone and established my business anywhere I wanted, but my history was on 22nd Street,” he said. “I was raised here, so therefore I’m going to invest here.”
In New Orleans, he said, he saw a lot of second- and third-generation black-owned businesses. He knew that was a concept he could bring back to St. Petersburg.
“Here in St. Pete the only black family-owned businesses you see are funeral homes, and today you don’t see many of those because they are being bought out or closed down,” he said.
The Brayboys, who have known each other since childhood, began dating when Carolyn was at 16th Street Junior High and Elihu at the Immaculate Conception Catholic School.
“It wasn’t love at first sight,” she said. “He was cute, but at that time boys were the furthest thing from my mind.”
She always knew that her calling was to become a businesswoman, she said. “My mother wanted me to become a teacher, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I changed my major from math education to finance.”
She was one of the first black students to attend St. Petersburg Junior College. She then earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s in business administration from Florida State University and landed a job at IBM, where she worked for 39 years.
The Brayboys lost track of each other for about a decade. But when he returned to Florida from New Orleans, they reconnected and married. They have three children: Gus, Lynae and Ramona.
“We’ve never given our children anything. Everything they’ve been given they have earned, because that’s the way it is in life. You have to work for what you want. To this day, our daughter (Ramona) pays us rent monthly for the salon space,” said Carolyn Brayboy.
On their mission to give back to a community that has lost so much, the Brayboys said they are determined to make their mark in the history of St. Petersburg.
Years from now, what will their legacy be?
“I want people to know that they have options,” he said. “They have the option to spend or the option to invest. When I am gone, let it be said that I chose to invest so that others could have a better life.”