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Harriet, 64 years old. What a beautiful, beautiful lady. Transplanted New Yorker, Harriet was a home care nurse for most of her life, until one of her arms went weak, until she got old herself. She's been married to the same man for 39 years, she told me proudly. Her husband is 76 years old. "And I will take care of him until the end," she said. "He won't be in any nursing home." Though Jewish, she got married in a church because her husband was Irish. "At the ceremony, the priest told me I should wear my Star of David inside my dress, and I had on a white dress because I was a virgin. I said, 'I'll wear this inside my dress if you remove that cross from the wall, behind you.'" Harriet's first love was a man half Filipino, half Cambodian. The day before the wedding, he revealed that he had a son. He also said, very sternly, that should anything happen to him, everything will go to this son. Harriet told him to shove it.

Harriet and her current husband were trying to go from New York to Florida when they ran out of money in Richmond. They had also been homeless. Now she works in a thrift store.





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