by Barbara A. Black

Created on: May 28, 2010   Last Updated: May 31, 2010

Growing up in a small community in the 1940s and 1950s in a poor family, I had no idea of ever going to college. All my parents expected - and demanded - of their seven children was to complete high school. Every one of us completed the requirements, one even going back to high school after his discharge from the Navy when World War II was over. By the time I was old enough to even think about college, I had never even been told that college was an option. I was expected to find a job that was "fitting for a young lady" and eventually get married and have children. I didn't have a boyfriend, and no suitors in sight. So I decided to take an extra year of high school.

During that year, I spent several days substituting for elementary teachers in the school, and helping out in their classes during my study hall period. By that spring, a couple of the teachers I had worked with began telling me that I should become a teacher. I still wasn't sure that I wanted to do that, but within a month after school was out, I had decided to try it.

The closest college was about thirty miles away, but I had no driver's license, no car, and no money to pay someone to take me back and forth. However, one of those teachers had graduated from another school in the area and told me I should apply there. I did, and was accepted. Now, all I had to do was to apply for financial help. She guided me toward the National Education Act loan application, and I was approved. She also helped me with applying for one of the resident halls on campus. I was getting excited about going to college; my major was to be Elementary Education, and I would become a teacher!

The second year, my baby brother joined me on campus. I had to borrow money from an uncle that year, and we both had to work in order for us to both go to college, but we managed. He lived in a boy's dorm, and I was in a girl's dorm. He found a girlfriend, who became his wife that Christmas. They moved into a house off campus, and I continued to live in the dorm. We saw each other occasionally, but our paths sometimes didn't cross for days at a time.

Eventually, after four years of study, I received my diploma-and a teaching certificate. I also owed the government about ten thousand dollars for my education, but it was well worth it. I got married to a teacher in the school who had moved there the year I was a junior. We settled down to become a family; he kept teaching, and I went back to begin work toward getting a Master's.

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