Gwendolyn Kelly

We traveled to Atlanta from Jackson, Mississippi, and so did Gwendolyn Kelly. She was born in Jackson, though she won’t tell us which year, and lived there until her first daughter was born in 1951.

Growing up in Mississippi was wonderful, Mrs. Kelly said. “I know Mississippi gets a very bad reputation,” she said. “We grew up feeling quite good about ourselves.”

Her father edited The Jackson Advocate newspaper, registered black voters and met President Ford.

Mrs. Kelly attended Dillard University for two years before transferring to Tougaloo College, a historically black college outside Jackson, to study sociology. Tougaloo was a hotbed of civil rights activism in the 1960s, but Mrs. Kelly told us she graduated a little before it really got radical. She entered teaching because it offered “definite hours.” She taught 3rd grade for 27 years.

Her husband was also a teacher, and he served in the military before she met him at Tougaloo. When they moved to Atlanta, he worked for Lockheed Martin. The house she lives in now was “as far as black people were moving in Atlanta” at the time, she said. “So we were part of desegregating Atlanta.”

Mrs. Kelly’s sister still lives in Atlanta, as do her son and two granddaughters. Her daughter and three other grandchildren are scattered but visit her often. None of her grandchildren are married, but she hopes for great-grandchildren someday, she said.

She has lived alone since her husband died in 1987. She would be “reluctant” to give up driving, she said, even though she saw how dangerous her mother’s driving became near the end of her life.

Medical care is different now than it was when her parents were getting older, she said. People were “just beginning to talk about high cholesterol” then, and black people only had access to certain doctors and hospitals. Now she receives excellent medical care for her stenosis, she said.

Mrs. Kelly talks openly with her children about her end of life plans. “I think they should know and they think they should know,” she said. She hopes to write her memoirs soon, so that her memories and stories can be preserved within her family.

Carmen Holman

Carmen Holman is looking for a job. The 62-year-old Atlanta native was laid off in October from an educational nonprofit. In her own words:

As it is, I’m seeking new employment. And trying to keep myself composed as I say that. It’s difficult at this age, at this day and time, to be faced with such a decision. So I had to look at Social Security, and other options, and make some really — you know, learn a lot of information very quickly. So I’m in that process right now, evaluating what is best for me to do at this time and sustain myself.

Ms. Holman attends an aerobics class every morning, to shed the morning stress of waking up without a job to go to. She stays busy maintaining her house and yard, organizing her finances and seeing friends and family. Her son lives next door, and while her daughter lives in California, they see each other often.

Ms. Holman attended college in Winona, Minnesota, where she was one of 7 black students. She spent her junior year at Fisk, a historically black university in Nashville, Tenn., which “kind of pulled me back into the real world,” she said. She has lived in the South ever since, moving between Georgia, North Carolina and Florida for various jobs, mostly teaching reading at college campuses. After divorcing 9 years ago, she lived in an apartment in Atlanta until purchasing her current house. Finding her home “was my fate, I believe, and I marvel at it each day,” she said.

Ms. Holman recently started driving again after a car accident two years ago, which she said was scary but “didn’t take away my bravery.”

Thanks to her severance package, Ms. Holman will continue to have health insurance through June. But Medicare will not kick in for another 3 years, when she is 65, so she is hoping to find another job with benefits before her current plan runs out.

“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time,” she said.

Because she is hereditarily vulnerable to high blood pressure, “the first thing in my mind is to keep myself calm,” Ms. Holman said. She said her family is very aware of health issues and living healthily, particularly since heart conditions and other diseases can be prominent in African-American communities.

“Tomorrow’s not promised to anybody,” she said. Still, her parents lived very long lives, and she hopes to live to age 95, as long as she is self-sufficient. She attends church every week and sings in a choir for a different church.

Ms. Holman would be open to remarriage, she said, though “pickings are slim for 62-year-old African-American women.” But she is busy, she said, and does not feel lonely or unhappy.

She still hopes to travel extensively and maybe earn a PhD, but her plans have been derailed by her current employment status. She recently found a staffing agency that works with people over the age of 50, and she is considering contacting them for help.

“When you get to this point in your life, why should you worry about your job security?” she asked.

For now, Carmen is hoping to find a job and then spend two weeks in California before she begins working again, visiting Yosemite and enjoying jazz concerts at Yoshi’s.