Beauty Breedlove Griffin: She fed and housed the homeless

This story is part of an ongoing Miami Herald series chronicling the lives of South Florida COVID-19 victims.

Beauty Breedlove Griffin was born on December 15, 1943, in Augusta, Georgia. She was one of Walter and Teero Breedlove’s 11 children. When Beauty was a teenager, the family moved to Plant City, Florida, where she attended Marshall Senior High School.

After she graduated, the family moved to Miami, where she met Eldridge Griffin, who worked building swimming pools. They married and in 1977 she gave birth to their daughter, Erica Breedlove Griffin.

She died on April 8 of complications associated with COVID-19. She was 76.

Beauty worked for more than 30 years as a clerical secretary at Santa Clara Elementary School, and retired in 2010. For more than 30 years, she was a member and missionary of Overtown’s Cohen Memorial Church, where she served on the board of ushers. She cooked meals for the homeless — at times through the church, and other times, out of her own pocket.

She even took in homeless people and helped them find a place to stay. “My mother was the epitome of a saint,” said her daughter, Erica. “Her life was filled with her giving to others.”

She was a devout Christian and heavily involved in the church. She sang in several choirs and was president of a church service she founded called The Overcomers Union, which sponsored a weekly Saturday breakfast and prayer. She also worked as a Sunday school teacher and assisted with the Holy Communion. Later in life, she wrote and recorded her own gospel songs.

“My mother lived for the lord,” said Erica. “Anyone could call her any time of day or night for words of encouragement or prayer.”

Erica recalls a time she herself was critically ill and near death in a coma at a hospital following two surgeries. The doctors told her mother she wouldn’t live through the night.

“My mother prayed for me,” Erica said, “Within hours [the doctor] returned telling my mother that she didn’t know what happened, but the internal bleeding had stopped on its own and that I had a chance to survive. I came out of my coma in three days; that’s how powerful my mother’s prayers were.”

She was an uplifting and loving person who helped everyone, her family says. She raised many of her nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews as her own children.

“She was beauty embodied in Beauty,” Erica said.

Beauty Breedlove Griffin was preceded in death by her parents, her 10 siblings, her nephew Peter James, and her niece Christie Breedlove. She is survived by her daughter, Erica Breedlove, her nephew Terry James, her four grandchildren, her grandnephews and grandnieces, and her great-grandnephews and great-grandnieces.

The family’s GoFundMe can be found here.

Beatriz De La Portilla, a Florida International University journalism student, wrote this story for the Miami Herald.