Top: Erik Clemons, who founded the Butterflies Fund in 2020 and the Community Cultivator Award in 2022. Bottom: Carlah Esdaile Bragg accepts the award. Photos Courtesy of BoydImages CT.
A steadfast champion of public health, public arts, and the power of people to lift each other up has been recognized as a “Community Cultivator” who blooms exactly where she is planted—and nourishes those around her too. Now, she’s using it as motivation to keep building the New Haven she wants to see.
That champion is Carlah Esdaile Bragg, who recently received the third annual “Community Cultivator” award from Erik Clemons and his daughters Kiara, Nyle, Nia and Kai. Launched in 2022 to celebrate the vibrant legacy of his wife, the late Sharon M. Clemons, the award recognizes New Haveners who embody the same selflessness and love with which Clemons lived her life.
Past recipients include early childhood educator and Inspired Communities, Inc. Founder Kim Harris and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s Erica G. Bradley. This year, Clemons marked the award with a hand-painted plate, on which bright, tiny flowers explode from the open mouth of a vase. The background is a bright, radiant yellow, as if the plate has soaked up a little piece of the sun itself.
“Sharon was my love,” Esdaile Bragg said. “She just had that spirit about her that was very compassionate, so healing.”
Photos Courtesy of BoydImages CT.
"This means so much to me and my daughters that every year, y'all come and be family with us," said Clemons at an event honoring his wife at ConnCORP earlier this spring. "This is about celebrating the life of an incredible human being. She was such a blessing.”
For Esdaile Bragg, who did not know that she was receiving the award, the honor is a way of keeping Clemons’ spirit and story alive in the work that she does every day. Decades ago, she and Clemons met in Bridgeport, where Clemons was still working with her older sister, LaTrenda Wilson. As Black women focused on their communities—and on the children they loved so deeply—they bonded instantly.
As the years passed, Esdaile Bragg watched Clemons become a doting mother to her four daughters, who were the center of her universe (“she always, always referred to them as her butterflies,” Esdaile-Bragg remembered). Their children, though different ages, overlapped for a few years at Dee Dee's Dance Center.
Even after that, the two women kept tabs on each other, catching up both at and well beyond the salon Clemons managed with her sister, Joy Brown, on State Street (the salon, called Sharon Joy in honor of its co-founders, is still open). When Clemons passed away suddenly in November 2020, Esdaile Bragg was devastated.
As she moved through her grief, she kept living a life in service to others. The director of marketing and community relations for the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center by day, she also does volunteer work with New Haven’s Hannah Gray Home, supports autism awareness work through the TJAY (Total Joy Are You) Foundation, and chairs the “Great Debate” event for the Connecticut NAACP.
In the time she somehow has outside of those, she has remained active with Sister’s Journey, a New Haven-based support group for breast cancer patients and survivors. The group, which was founded by the late Linda White-Epps, meets every third Tuesday of the month at 5:30 p.m. at St. Luke’s Church on Whalley Avenue.
She never does it for recognition, she said. “I just try to do my little part” in making her corner of the world a kinder place to be.
“When he [Erik Clemons] said my name, I almost fell on the floor,” she added. “I was just so surprised and so honored. I could feel her spirit. When I looked at that plate, I saw my life.”
From Caterpillars, Butterflies
The "butterflies" themselves. Photos Courtesy of BoydImages CT.
Sharon Clemons’ legacy—the infectious, bright joy, grace and generosity she put out into the world—also lives on in the Sharon M. Clemons "Butterflies" Fund, which Erik Clemons established following his wife’s passing. The fund, which lives at the Community Foundation, awards thousands of dollars in scholarships to young Black women at Smith College, Tuskegee University, Hampton University and Spelman College each year.
Those four colleges are the schools that Clemons’ daughters, whom she lovingly called her “butterflies,” attended. Since its launch in 2020, the “Butterflies” Fund has awarded over $200,000 to a total of 40 scholarship recipients. In addition, the family has worked to support Black-owned businesses around New Haven, from Bloom in the city’s Westville neighborhood to the photography business Boyd Images.
“The Clemons family is just incredibly generous,” said Bradley, who currently works as the manager of community philanthropy for the Community Foundation. As someone who also knew and loved Sharon, she called it a fitting way to honor her generous and vibrant legacy.
And indeed, that legacy is helping fund not just college educations, but future careers that will support young Black women in business, STEM, education and the arts among other fields. Reached by phone, multiple Butterflies Fund recipients said they are extremely grateful for the support—and the meaning behind it.
“I would say, in the beginning, college is always a financial concern,” said Danielle Grant, a freshman at Spelman College who is enrolled in a dual-degree program in chemistry and engineering. “For the Butterflies Fund to say, ‘You got this,’ it’s helping me pursue a dream.”
After attending New Haven schools through her senior year (she had high praise for ESUMS, which nurtured her love for STEM), Grant was intrigued by the community that Spelman could offer her, she said. Not only is the school a Historically Black University, it is also an all-women’s university in a world where she already has to struggle to prove herself as a woman in science.
“The school in itself is kind of small, but the community is large,” she said, noting the school’s proximity to Morehouse College and Clark University. “Seeing all different types of Black people, you see the difference in culture … I’ve been able to build bonds with people that I never imagined [I would know]. I feel like that helps us build each other up."
Kendra Hill, a junior studying business management at Hampton University, echoed that sense of feeling supported by the fund. The support isn’t just financial, she explained—it’s knowing that she’s carrying on the memory of someone who was known and deeply beloved in her community.
“I was just really honored to receive the scholarship on behalf of the Clemons family because carrying on that legacy is really important,” she said.