Reathea Alberta Holloman

DOB: 5/20/1936 - 88 years old

Though she has no children of her own, Ms. Reathea is the matriarch of her family, with over 40 nieces and nephews, Family and friends come to her for advice and help.

She was delivered by a midwife at home in Bremo Bluff in Fluvanna. Of her 11 brothers and sisters, nine still survive. Although her father worked for the railroad, the family lived on a farm. She remembers that they had chickens, hogs, horses and a garden, and recalls that she walked everywhere. Her family got drinking water from a spring on the farm, and their bathing water came from rain barrels.

Life was racially segregated during her childhood, with signs in public spaces indicating “colored” or “white.” Ms. Reathea attended the West Bottom Rosenwald School* and the SC Abrams High School, both for Black children. She remembers White children on school buses laughing at the Black kids who were walking to school. The Black children’s school books, she says, were second-hand.

She wanted to leave Fluvanna when she graduated from high school, and spent 13 years in Washington DC and 28 years in Dayton, Ohio. When she retired in 1995, she moved back to Fluvanna, which was no longer as rural as it had been when she grew up. Since then, Ms. Reathea volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for 16 years. She is an esteemed trustee of West Bottom Baptist Church, where she has served as treasurer and as a choir member for more than 10 years. 

Ms. Reathea knows her family history only as far back as her grandparents. No one in her family has tried to make a family tree.

Ms. Reathea loves to be photographed and enjoyed having her portrait painted. She says laughingly, “You see so much beauty in my photographs.” When asked, “How would people describe you?,” the 88-year-old jokes, “Adorable.” That’s Ms. Reathea—sharp and wise, with a great sense of humor.

Ms. Reathea