Deborah: It’s a family affair
Deborah is a 58-year-old Black woman who lives in the Atlanta area with her husband of 36 years. She works full-time as a medical coder in the radiation oncology department of a major hospital. In addition, for more than 20 years she has run a successful full-service event planning business.
Photo Credit: Nydia Blas (all photos)
Deborah was born in Miami, Florida where her father was working on his PhD in Psychology and her mother was training to be a Registered Nurse (RN). Her grandmother lived nearby and helped to take care of Deborah and her brother when their parents were working and studying.
When Deborah was 10, her father was offered a faculty position at Tulane University, and the family moved to New Orleans. Five years later, they moved again, this time to Atlanta, Georgia when he took a job at Georgia State University. As an RN, her mother was able to find work each time they moved.
When they lived in Miami, Deborah and her brother went to a private Catholic school. Later in New Orleans and then in Atlanta they went to public schools. Deborah was a good student who enjoyed her classes. In high school, with the encouragement of her parents, she took advanced level classes and ended up skipping a grade and graduating a year early.
Growing up, Deborah believed she wanted a career like those of her parents: “My parents were my role models. First, I said I wanted to be a nurse like mom. And then once I was in high school I started thinking about all the biology and chemistry I would have to go through for nursing. I was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to be a nurse’. So, then it was teaching, like my dad.” Deborah went on to college and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education. Soon after college, she met and married her husband, and started teaching fifth grade at a public elementary school.
When she was seven months pregnant with her first child, tragedy struck. Her mother and her younger brother were in a devastating car accident. Her brother survived but her mother was killed. Deborah was heartbroken: “I cried and cried. I went down to 95 pounds. I could not eat. And the doctor was worried about the baby. This was the most difficult time for me in my life. My mother was a mother but also like a best friend, a sister to me. A part of me was gone.”
As she had in the past, Deborah’s grandmother stepped in to support her. She moved in with Deborah and her husband to take care of the baby while Deborah recovered and went back to work. She lived with them for two years and then moved back to Florida. When Deborah became pregnant for the second and third times, her grandmother again moved in with them, caring for the children. For Deborah, her grandmother, family, and the church community, in which she and her husband have been active for many years, are important anchors of support.
Back in the classroom, Deborah soon felt discouraged about her work. She liked teaching but the pay was low and she had become frustrated by the unruly behavior and seemingly insurmountable personal problems of the students. When she worked a summer job at the telephone company (AT&T), she realized that she was better paid and less stressed there. She decided to leave teaching and work full-time at AT&T.
After working there for 18 years, Deborah was laid off during a period of corporate restructuring. Although it was a difficult time emotionally for Deborah, she never worried about being unable to pay bills or provide for the family’s necessities. Her husband maintained his job and she received severance pay from AT&T. After taking online classes to become certified as a medical coder, she found a job coding medical records at a major Atlanta hospital.
Deborah has worked at the hospital for 22 years, mostly happily, although she has experienced prejudice from a couple of her white supervisors over the years. “They would help promote the white workers and do nothing for us, for the Black workers. Although we had been working much longer and actually trained some of these people who were now the managers.” In her work she doesn’t seek friendship, but she does hope to be respected and treated fairly.
In addition to her full-time job as a medical coder, Deborah also has a full-service event planning business. She plans birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries and other celebrations. Her services include helping to choose and send the invitations, arranging for the venue, catering, decorations, entertainment and clean-up. While Deborah runs the business and keeps the calendar, it has become a family business in the sense that her two adult daughters often help her up with set up and serving during events. Even her husband pitches in, using his photography skills to document the event. About a year ago Deborah and her husband built their “dream home” – a ranch-style house with a basement utility room that holds the equipment she uses, such as tables, chairs and linens. They make matching t-shirts to wear as they work these occasions. In colors that coordinate with the wedding theme, the t-shirts say: “It's a family affair.”
Until the early months of 2020, Deborah was doing two or three events per week. Once the pandemic hit, her business came to an abrupt halt. People stopped having events and gatherings and her earnings plummeted. Occasionally she would erect a balloon archway in someone’s driveway to celebrate a birthday, but many events were canceled or postponed. As the restrictions on in-person gatherings eased in 2021, she happily started to see her business pick up.
Deborah missed her event planning work, which she enjoys a lot, during the pandemic slowdown. The loss of income from it was inconvenient but never economically threatening to her. Even though she works on her event planning almost full-time, she sees it as a side business that is an “extra” for family luxuries. It’s also a form of financial insurance, a safety net that can become important if she or her husband lose their job. “The event planning gives me bonus money, to pay for vacations, extras, things like that. And I always say you should have something to fall back on. Like if I got laid off from the hospital, I have my business to fall back on.”
Deborah hopes to retire from her hospital job someday, but she will continue with her event planning business because it gives her pleasure as well as a source of income. She also wants to travel and spend time with her family. The new house that she and her husband have built is located close to her father and her three adult children. Deborah is proud of the life that she has built over the years, a life that has always been “a family affair."