It was the first of 51 Peabody Apartment buildings that will fall over the next six months.

The landscape along Talbotton Road, Hamilton Road, 27th Street, 23rd Street and Comer Avenue will change -- and it will change dramatically.

The year-long relocation of nearly 800 people who lived in Peabody is almost complete.

The 500-plus units will be replaced with a mixed-income community containing 360 new apartments. Some traditional low-income public housing residents will live next to people willing to pay market rates for apartments close to downtown and the city's medical community.

Peabody, a public housing complex owned by the Housing Authority of Columbus, has been home to thousands of people since it opened in 1940. It started as the "white projects," home to many working-poor mill families. Recently, it has been home to some of the poorest people in Columbus. The average median annual income for families in and around Peabody was less than $8,000 a year in 2001. That compares to about $36,000 for the average Columbus-area household.

There have been stories of hope and despair out of Peabody over the last six decades.

Today, the newspaper introduces you to some of the Peabody people. Some have not lived there in more than 40 years. One started renting in 1940 and didn't leave until April of this year. One mother and her three daughters are among the eight families still left in the sprawling complex. Some of the residents who have moved during the last year have struggled with the change. Others like the change.

Here are their stories:

Joann Elliott

For the first time in many years, Joann Elliott likes what she sees at Peabody Apartments.

The systematic dismantling of the public housing complex is under way.

Elliott, who works next door at the Veri Best Donut shop, keeps track of the work carefully.

"I see it as the best thing that ever happened," Elliott said. "The area needs to be revitalized. I saw it go from a good place to live -- to a place where they sold drugs."

Peabody has been a part of Elliott's life for many years. The last 21 she has sold doughnuts at the intersection of 27th Street and Talbotton Road.

During the late 1950s and early '60s, she lived in Peabody.

"Peabody used to be a nice place to live," Elliott said. "You could sit outside and nobody bothered you."

Elliott left Peabody for a home in North Highlands.

"February of 1962," she said.

Elliott proudly points to the three-bedroom apartment -- 322-F -- she shared with her husband and six children. She and her husband both worked at Swift Mill on Sixth Avenue and paid $80 a month for rent.

"I will never forget it," she said. "Used to, you could go to bed with the doors unlocked and the windows up."

Jimmy Yancey

To 5-year-old Jimmy Yancey, the Peabody Apartments of 1946 were an impressive sight.

"We went from five people living in a two-room house in North Highlands with an outside bathroom to a three-bedroom apartment with a living room, kitchen and bathroom," said Yancey, 63. "From a child's eye, that was the best thing I ever saw."

The view was just as good when Yancey looked out the doors of 208-J on 27th Street.

"Out the back door, I could see the playground," Yancey said. "And out the front door, I could see where I was going to elementary school -- Waverly Terrace."

He shared the apartment with his parents Harry and Louise, his brother Kenneth, and his sister Carolyn. Yancey has come a long way from the days in Peabody. He is now chairman of Synovus Financial Corp. and one of the state's most influential bankers.

His family moved in and out of Peabody three times before he graduated from Jordan High School in 1959.

"There were a lot of good families in that project," Yancey said. "There was a sense of community. There was a playground and a playground director -- Miss Cannon," Yancey said. "There was a sense of supervision. If they caught you doing something wrong, they would report you to your mom and dad."

Both of Yancey's parents were mill workers.

"Peabody was primarily populated with folks who worked in the mills," Yancey said.

Mamie Bowles

Halloween, 1940.

Mamie Bowles remembers it well.

"That was the day," she said. "Halloween."

Bowles and her family moved into the brand-new Peabody Apartments. Little did she know she would live there for the next 64 years. The only thing that could move her was the demolition of Peabody.

"She is the history of Peabody," said Amy Moore, manager of HOPE VI and redevelopment services for the Housing Authority of Columbus.

Bowles, who will turn 90 next week, and her 53-year-old disabled daughter left Peabody in April for Warren Williams Apartments. They are about two miles from familiar turf.

She calls Warren Williams "the end of nowhere."

"I liked Peabody," Bowles said. "It was a lot better there. You had the shopping center, the grocery store. You had everything up there."

Despite her age, Bowles makes a daily walk to the Lewis Jones grocery store on 13th Street. Her routines have changed. A lot of her friends are scattered throughout the Housing Authority's complexes.

Still, Bowles, counts her blessings.

"God's been good to me," she said.

Betty Beeks

It's all a bad rap as far as Betty Beeks is concerned.

After moving to Columbus from Nashville, Beeks spent 20 years in Peabody Apartments.

"Peabody is not what people thought it was," Beeks said.

She was relocated Dec. 12 from Peabody to Farley Homes, across from Marshall Middle School. She received $1,000 from the Housing Authority of Columbus to move from one two-bedroom apartment to another.

Her subsidized rent in Peabody was $132 a month, compared to the $105 she now pays at Farley. The power bill, however, is higher at Farley, an all-electric complex.

If Beeks had her way, Peabody would not be coming down. She tried to organize residents to fight the Housing Authority and its bid to use a $20 million federal grant to replace Peabody with a mixed-income community.

"Peabody wasn't as bad as people thought," Beeks said. "Those bricks didn't ever touch nobody. It was the people they let in that hurt Peabody."

Beeks said she hears from those she tried to organize to fight the inevitable.

"I run into people all the time who say they want to get back into Peabody," Beeks said. "And they ain't talking about the new Peabody."

Doris King

Every time she goes to the Wal-Mart on Airport Thruway, Doris King is reminded what the move from Peabody Apartments to Rivers Homes off Wynnton Road costs her.

"It costs $4," King said. "It used to cost $2."

When she lived at Peabody, King could catch a city bus straight to the Wal-Mart. Now, she has to go to Wynnton Road, catch a bus, take it to the transfer station and catch another bus to Wal-Mart. She reverses the process coming home.

"Just more trouble," King said.

King, 57, lived in Peabody for 15 years. She describes herself as independent. The move to Rivers Homes has gotten in the way of that independence. She has trouble pushing her shopping buggy up the hill to the two-bedroom apartment that offers a beautiful view of downtown Columbus.

But King is holding out hope she will be one of the chosen few allowed back in Peabody when it is rebuilt as a gated, mixed-income community.

"It is a little nicer up here, but I can't wait to get back to Peabody," King said. "But it is not just Peabody, it is the whole area."

Mike and Janis Robinson

The word Janis Robinson uses to describe her new apartment is "comfortable."

After living in Peabody Apartments for more than 13 years, Janis and her husband, Mike, have moved to a two-bedroom apartment off Rosemont Drive.

"I like it better," said Janis Robinson, 47. "It is a more comfortable, nice place."

They moved out of Peabody in December using Section 8 vouchers to find an apartment. The federally funded Section 8 program provides assistance to low-income people. It moves those who would normally live in a traditional public housing complex into privately owned apartments.

The Robinson's receive $291 in government assistance toward their $375 monthly rent.

Through help from a Pastoral Institute program that is helping those relocated in the Peabody redevelopment, Janis Robinson has gotten a job at Goodwill Industries. Mike Robinson, 44, has begun taking computer courses and hopes to enroll at Columbus Tech or Columbus State University.

Both say they are in a better situation than when they were paying $84 a month rent to live in 316-A at Peabody.

"No comparison," Mike Robinson said. "That was a high drug area. This is a lot better that way."

Iona Satterfield

Iona Satterfield has a dream.

The 45-year-old single mom wants to own a house. After spending 20 years in Peabody, she took her 10-year-old son, James, and moved into Warren Williams Apartments in December.

But that dream is still a ways off. Satterfield is looking for a full-time job. She had an offer last week, but lost the job because she did not have a driver's license.

Satterfield was a leader at Peabody. She was president of the residents council. She worked with Housing Authority officials as they prepared the successful HOPE VI application that will lead to the revitalization of Peabody.

She is adjusting to her new surroundings.

"Every complex does things different," Satterfield said. "I fit in the best I can. I am the new kid on the block."

She has watched her Peabody friends struggle as they adjust to change.

"A lot of us didn't know what the effect was going to be," she said. "Now, it is hitting us harder than we expected."

Jasmine, Cynthia and Shanice Myricks

With big smiles and sing-song voices, Jasmine and Shanice Myricks can tell you exactly what color they will paint their new bedroom.

"Gold with purple butterflies," they both say. Jasmine, 12, and Shanice, 11, attend Arnold Middle School.

Only eight families remain in Peabody Apartments, and the Myricks are one of them.

But as they wait out the final days in apartment 201-K, they know better things await them. Cynthia Myricks expects to buy a two-bedroom home in East Highlands in the coming weeks and move her family out of Peabody by the end of the month.

Myricks, who works as a cook at Hannan Elementary School, will be moving her family out of their home for the last 11 years.

As her daughters have grown, Cynthia Myricks said she, too, has grown "through the grace of God."

"I used to have low self-esteem," she said.

Her involvement with House of Hope, a church less than 200 yards from her apartment, has helped her turn her life around. All around her home, there are a number of angels with smiling black faces, to remind her of her faith and good fortune.

As she prepares to be one of the last people to leave Peabody, Cynthia Myricks has no regrets. "It was home," she said. "It is home. It has a warm, serene feeling. There is love here. I never thought of it as a public housing area -- I thought of it as my home. And I made it my home."