Karen Shelton

“My name is Karen and I'm 58 years old and I live in Avondale for 50 years. The image of the picture with my mother is that she is at my brother's wedding, and, um, that's what the picture is. And she's just a beautiful lady. She was very kind. Always dressing up, looking like this. My mother was a loving kind person and she could she loved to cook and she loved to go to bingo. And she was really she was a housewife up until ‘73 when my father got had a bad accident. And so, she had to go and start working then.

It heals me because it makes me feel like I'm at home when I'm in Avondale, or see a picture of my mother, or ride past our old house. It just makes me feel like I'm at home. It kind of pains me from how Avondale is going, with a lot of drugs and killings and stuff out here. Now, that kind of makes me hurt from being out here now, seeing from when I grew up here.

I got mixed emotions now about Avondale. I mean, Avondale, it was a community back then when I grew up and everybody looked out for everybody. It was a village, more like.”

Click below to hear Karen share the story of this photograph and the Avondale community: