Sadie Tonkins, 101; Was Co-Owner of D.C. Record Store

Sadie Serena Sawyer Tonkins, 101, a retired co-owner of a radio repair and record store at 14th and U streets NW, died Nov. 7 of cardiopulmonary failure at the Manor Cove assisted living facility in Largo. She was a former resident of Capitol Heights.

Mrs. Tonkins was born in Shoals, N.C., and received her bachelor's degree in 1930 from Barber Scotia College, a historically black college in Concord, N.C. She married the next year and moved with her husband, David Tonkins, to the District.

A few years later, she and her husband became surrogate parents to her two younger sisters and his niece, who moved to the District from rural North Carolina to finish school. The segregated school that the sisters attended -- in a one-room, one-teacher frame schoolhouse -- didn't go beyond the seventh grade.

Mrs. Tonkins had gone to high school at Bennett Seminary (now Bennett College) in Greensboro, N.C., but her mother decided that the younger daughters should move to the District to continue their education. (They both graduated from Howard University.)

The Tonkins bought their business in the late 1930s, renamed it David's Radio and Music Store and added a shooting gallery and musical instrument shop. David Tonkins worked in the shop in the morning; she took over at noon. They added a second radio and record store in Georgetown.

In the 1950s, they sold out and bought a sportsmen's club near Glenn Dale, complete with a restaurant and horse-racing track.

Mrs. Tonkins also attended Cortez Peters Business School and Terrell Business School, and when she and her husband sold the sportsmen's club, she went to work in accounts receivable at Woodward & Lothrop. She retired in 1975.

She was a member of Antioch Baptist Church in the District, where she was a member of the Young at Heart Arts and Crafts Club.

Her husband died in 1976.

Survivors include two sisters, Doris Sawyer Williamson of the District and Jewel Sawyer Dennis of Capitol Heights.

-- Joe Holley