The peace and tranquility of Richard and Charlene Relford’s lives was interrupted over the weekend when Richard was getting ready to cut the grass at the couple’s home on Lordship Lane in Royal Grant.
Richard, who is black, was taken aback when he saw the yellow siding next to a rear window marred with the words, “Dirt hole [expletive]!” scrawled in green paint across the wall.
“I was in shock, really,” Relford said. “It was like one of those moments where you couldn’t believe what you saw. I stood there dumbfounded, I thought, where did that come from?”
Charlene nearly broke down in tears when she saw the graffiti, which was found, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 speech where he called for equality for all Americans. The Relfords feel the offensive language is a throwback to a much uglier time in American history, a relic of times past.
“It’s hard to believe this happened to us,” Relford said. “We continue to ask ourselves why. We’ve never done anything to anybody to make them do this.”
Royal Grant is a subdivision outside of Dover consisting of middle to upper-middle class homes. The area is home to families of all races, Relford said.
“You’ve got blacks, whites, Hispanics in here,” he said. “It’s very diverse.”
Relford immediately called the Delaware State Police, who came out to investigate not only the defacing of his home but a piece of graffiti left on a neighbor’s fence three houses down the road. While offensive, that scrawl was not of a racial nature, said police spokesman Sgt. Walter Newton.
“It appears the same paint color was used in both incidents,” Newton said. “There’s probably a nexus there, but we’re not treating it as a hate crime.”
The Relfords bought the two-story home approximately 17 years ago after both retired from the U.S. Air Force and settled in Dover. They said they’re friendly with their neighbors and that this is the first time they can recall such an incident in their community.
A similar hate crime occurred in January 2009 near Hartly; police later found a neighbor had been responsible for the graffiti.
“I’ve run into racism before, off and on,” Relford said. “It rears its ugly head every so often.
“I had people in Vietnam call me a [expletive] just because they were having a bad day. You hope some day they’ll get a sense of themselves and change their feelings. You live and learn. I’ve never been one to harbor a grudge because someone’s a different color from me.”
