Allstate Agent to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

© Photograph by Alex Harris

I’d been a real estate insurance agent for Allstate for almost 20 years, working out of Longmont, Colorado. My husband, Steve, worked as an agent for 10 years in the same office. We were doing well, making six figures. The thing is, I wasn’t a typical insurance agent. My manager, my clients, and my staff used to joke that was really a social worker who just happened to sell insurance…

When I was 52 and Steve was 51, we took another look at our lives. I asked him what he’d really like to be doing, and he said teaching theater in college. So I said, “Why aren’t we doing it?” And we set about getting him in school….I was interested in working in a social services position, maybe with a woman’s shelter. I had volunteered on a crisis line for domestic violence. I had served on a board of directors of a homeless transitional housing organization. I thought about jobs that deal with domestic violence and homelessness…

I was offered a position working on homelessness at HUD. They asked me, “Why do you want to do this?” And I understood in my soul it was something I had been carrying since the 1960s. I demonstrated against the war. I worked for Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, and I had incorporated into my life the words of John Kennedy. I told them I was responding to the call I had heard all those years ago, to ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. It just felt like what I was supposed to be doing.

I’ve learned to trust my instincts. I remember always wondering how do you know when you are called? Does God appear? I didn’t understand. I’ve seen things fall into place, but it’s so difficult to trust or have confidence that they will. I remember speaking to a spiritual counselor. I told her, “I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a chasm.” And she said, “Spread your wings and fly.”

Read Velma’s full story in Encore »