Comment on Woman’s life part of NM history

Athalia Jones speaks at an OASIS Albuquerque panel discussion about Home Circle, a black women’s group she belongs to that has been active in Albuquerque for 100 years. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal) When Athalia Jones showed up for her 99th birthday party at the Center for Spiritual Living last month, assistant minister Andrew Groves asked her how she was. “Every time I see her,” he said of the petite and bespectacled Jones, “when I ask how she is, she says, ‘I am so happy to be here.’ That’s just who she is – just happiness to be wherever she is, happiness to be on the planet, and I think that’s a mutual thing: she brings that out in everyone.” The party there was one of three birthday celebrations for Jones, one of the oldest living black New Mexicans, the oldest living black graduate of the University of New Mexico and a member of the black women’s organization, Home Circle, which celebrated its 100th year of service this year. Jones was born in Roswell, went to high school and college in Albuquerque, lived in California with her husband for more than half a century, and then, 15 years ago, came home to New Mexico.