Jason Campbell is a freelance writer in Washington.
Opinion My grandma has always made the hardest things seem simple — even living to 100
And yet, live she did. And on Aug. 10, she will turn 100. As I write, she is probably home in her 14th-floor apartment in Northwest Washington, where she still lives alone, sitting in her chaise watching “Judge Judy” and eating a slice of apple pie.
I have long dreamed of telling the story of my grandma, Florence Elizabeth Carmichael Adams, a Black woman soon to enter her 11th decade on this earth. She was born in Trenton, N.J, and moved as a child to Millville, where she graduated from high school in 1941. Despite being near the top of her class, she was unable to find a job in town. As a Black security guard told her and her mother as they left one building after another unsuccessful interview: “They ain’t hiring if you look like us.”
After some time at home, Grandma got a job at the Quartermaster Depot in South Philadelphia, where her primary responsibility was managing the shipping of clothes for troops fighting in World War II. Once the war ended, she was transferred to Northern Virginia to work in the office of the Army Adjutant General. Construction of the Pentagon had begun in 1941, and yet when Grandma started there in 1946, the building was not quite finished. On her first day, she marveled at the vast size of the place, at the white marble every which way.
While at the Pentagon, Grandma lived in the same-sex dormitories for government workers located at Oklahoma Avenue and Benning Road NE. After one long day, she agreed to accompany friends to the coed game room. And lucky she did: That night, she met David Adams of Atlanta, Ga. They married on March 23, 1947.
With the support of my grandfather, who died in 1996, Grandma pursued her dream of becoming a primary school teacher. She entered Howard University, excited at the prospect of being taught by Black teachers. In high school, she’d been one of only five Black students and had had no Black teachers. On her first day at Howard, she walked into the classroom and saw her professor — who was White. (She still chuckles about this.) She spent two years at Howard before transferring to American University, which, unlike Howard at the time, offered a bachelor of arts in primary education.
After graduating, Grandma started at Maude E. Aiton Elementary School. Although she wanted to teach second grade, the principal asked her to teach fourth grade because she was tall. And for the next 23 years, that’s what she did.
Nine years ago, I sat with my sister, her boyfriend, my mother, father, auntie and grandmother around the dining room table at my parents’ home. In the middle of the usual Thanksgiving dinner discussion — after life updates from us children, blue-toned political thoughts, and my grandmother asking my father several times whether he was asleep (he never was: only resting his eyes) — my Aunt Alicia said, “You know President Kennedy spoke at Ma’s graduation from American University?” Astonished, I glanced at Grandma. She had sat less than 50 feet from one of the most iconic American presidents? She nodded in confirmation.
On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy spoke on a hot, sultry day at the AU commencement ceremony. He used this pulpit to call for world peace, despite the civil rights upheaval at home and the disallowance of peace for Black people in America. Grandma listened surrounded by her husband, her mother, and her two daughters, Alicia and Lucile. As the president spoke, the girls played in the grass, wondering how much longer they had to be out there under the sweltering summer sun.
On that day, Grandma couldn’t have known that Alicia would become the first Black female vice president at Kennedy’s living memorial — the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Or that Lucile would navigate her way from laboratory benches to become the first African American woman to receive a PhD in epidemiology in the country and currently a professor of oncology and senior dean at the Georgetown University Medical Center.
Raising two Black daughters at the beginning of the civil rights movement was no easy feat. For them to rise — each like a rose through cement — took everything from my grandmother and grandfather: every hour, every day, every month, every year.
My grandparents raised their girls in a modest home in Southeast Washington. Not many dreams born at that time in that neighborhood came to fruition, but the dreams in 5509 B Street were different. That is my grandmother’s legacy.
Classically, a legacy is flowers from planted seeds that you never get to see bloom. But my grandmother’s seeds are blooming in front of her. She gets to experience the beauty of those flowers — a rarity for most, and especially a Black woman born in America 100 years ago. At that Thanksgiving dinner, I asked, “Grandma, how did you do it? How did you raise Auntie and my mom to do what they have done?”
She hesitated. I waited for some definitive response to one of life’s most pressing questions: How can we inspire and support those we love most? All she said was, “We raised them together. Your grandfather and I.”
She made it sound so simple, as natural as breathing, but it was not. It was like finding one’s breath after climbing a mountain. But somehow, Grandma has always made even the hardest things seem simple. Even living to 100.