Dear Family and Friends,

Losing one parent is difficult. But the family of Quinn C. Shelton, 86, and Eleanor Shelton, 85, lost both parents within a day of each other in an uncanny turn of events. Together they have three children, six grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.

Two weeks after her 85th birthday on January 3rd, Eleanor was hospitalized with a heart valve leak that caused accelerated vascular dementia. She was vivacious and active in her retirement community but her health declined rapidly within six months. Eleanor passed away quietly, surrounded by family, early Wednesday morning on June 23rd, in Marietta, GA.

An African-American historian and amateur genealogist, Eleanor discovered her family's New England Native American history, wrote books on her freeborn and enslaved ancestors, and published articles in the Connecticut Genealogical Society. She also was the architect of the Black Catholic Oral History Project at the Archdiocese of Washington -- collecting and cataloging rare oral histories of Black Catholics throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C.

A day and a half after she died, Eleanor's ex-husband Quinn passed peacefully away in Houston, TX following years of progressive dementia. Highly intelligent and gregarious, Quinn loved people. He was one of the few African American men to become a Computer Scientist in the early 1960s when he designed Boston's off-track betting system and was among the early programmers who developed the U.S. Social Security Mainframe at a time when such opportunities were rare for Black men.

The cost and stress of flying back and forth between Atlanta and Houston to oversee their parents’ medical care, be by their hospital and nursing home bedsides, and arrange for both parents' homegoings simultaneously -- while maintaining their families and job responsibilities -- has taken its toll on this family emotionally, physically, mentally, and financially.

As a family friend, I ask you to help this family struggling to put their lives together and adjust to the new normal without Eleanor and Quinn. They need help to offset the costs of remains disposal and transport, cremation, urn and boxes, memorial service expenses, repast catering, miscellaneous expenses for services, burial, headstone, transportation, travel and accommodations, residual medical expenses, settling of their parents' debts, estate expenses, and affairs, and any unforeseen expenses they continue to encounter after a painful ordeal. They honored both their parents at their personal expense to lay them to their final rest. Your support will help lessen this impossibly heavy burden of having lost both their parents and grandparents at the same time in different states.

Thank you!