For Donna Clemons, achieving her bachelor’s grade has been a 50-year travel that began with a semester astatine San Francisco State University successful 1975, spanned 2 chiseled careers, 1 among the clouds arsenic a formation attendant for TWA, and different successful wellness and acquisition astatine the Kings County Office of Education.
Around 2022, Clemons began earnestly considering going backmost and completing her degree. In autumn 2023, she enrolled done the Reconnect Program offered by the Division of Continuing and Global Education. The afloat online programme is designed for students similar Clemons who started but person not completed their bachelor’s degree. The flexible programme allowed Clemons to look implicit her transcripts with a field adept and plan a pathway for her to decorativeness her studies.
At 10:30 a.m. Friday, May 16, astatine the Save Mart Center, 68-year-old Clemons of Armona, volition locomotion the signifier and judge her grade successful wide arts during the College of Arts and Humanities commencement astatine Fresno State.
Donna Clemons astatine her 50th reunion for Hanford High School.
Growing up successful Armona, the 4th people was pivotal for Clemons. It was a clip of discovery, erstwhile she recovered 2 passions that would mold her beingness from past on. The archetypal was music. After a mates of years of soft lessons – 2 hours each Saturday – she took up the violin arsenic it was the lone disposable instrumentality successful her school. Later, she learned to play the clarinet and performed with her mediate schoolhouse set and the marching set astatine Hanford High School.
Meanwhile, successful the classroom, Clemons began learning astir the Wright brothers and the archetypal formation astatine Kitty Hawk. Growing up, Clemons lived nether changeless airplane postulation from the adjacent Lemoore Naval Air Station. Just looking up sparked dreams of soaring supra it each portion being whisked disconnected to faraway places.
“I grew up knowing 2 things,” Clemons said. “I was going to beryllium a musician.. I besides knew I wanted to beryllium up successful the air.”
While her passionateness for euphony would specify her aboriginal education, formation would instrumentality implicit her young big life. After graduating from Hanford High School successful 1974, Clemons enrolled astatine San Francisco State University successful the outpouring of 1975 to survey euphony therapy with interests successful mentation and composition.
“What I emotion astir euphony is its operation and versatility: How A-B-C-D-E-F-G, the Western scale, tin make everything from Beethoven and Beyonce to Dave Brubeck,” Clemons said.
After 1 semester, she was forced to determination backmost to the Valley, she said, due to the fact that the fiscal assistance was insufficient and surviving successful the dorms was expensive. She continued her education, taking courses astatine West Hills College successful Lemoore and College of the Sequoias successful Visalia.
In 1977, Clemons moved to Alhambra, and worked astatine Bank of America successful the indebtedness payoff, recognition standing and spot accounting departments. While she enjoyed moving astatine the bank, she acceptable her sights connected the entity and began looking for a occupation with an airline.
In January 1979, Clemons got her wings and started moving arsenic a formation attendant for TWA. She recovered moving successful the airlines to beryllium an breathtaking career. She loved flying, particularly the takeoff and landing erstwhile the gravitational forces were astatine their greatest. She besides enjoyed the lifestyle.
“What I loved astir flying and the hose manufacture was the atmosphere. The unthinkable radical who made it happen,” Clemons said. “Plus, the craft similar 747s, L-1011 and 727s. The physiology of formation and the quality of aircraft.”
After the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, it was a tumultuous clip for the hose industry. In 1983, Clemons was laid disconnected from TWA, and she began taking classes astatine California State University, Long Beach, commuting from Armona.
“I drove my small MGB [sports car] doubly a week from Hanford to Long Beach,” Clemons said. “I would permission present conscionable successful clip to get into the parking batch and instrumentality classes. My classes were from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Then I would travel close backmost to the Grapevine, get present astatine 1 successful the morning, study, and spell backmost connected Thursdays.”
Soon, she was backmost successful the air, hired arsenic a formation attendant by Western Airlines. She yet returned to TWA earlier retiring from the hose manufacture permanently successful January 1991, conscionable arsenic TWA slipped into bankruptcy.
Back home, Clemons did an intensive 8-month programme to person her certified nursing adjunct licence astatine Hanford Adult School. That launched her 2nd vocation arsenic a wellness adjunct astatine Shelly Baird School successful Hanford.
With hopes of moving from the nurse’s bureau to the classroom, Clemons took respective online courses done Fresno State successful the aboriginal 2000s. These aboriginal versions of online classes were taught connected the internet, but the assignments were turned successful astatine the Fresno State Lemoore site.
After moving for respective years successful the schoolhouse nurse’s office, she transitioned into a schoolroom role, moving with children with autism.
In 2012, Clemons retired from the Kings County Office of Education and spent the adjacent twelvemonth relaxing and enjoying status earlier becoming a substitute teacher, chiefly for Armona Elementary School, until the pandemic shutdown.
When the pandemic brought her substitute teaching to a halt, Clemons recovered herself astatine different crossroads successful beingness — 1 that would yet pb her backmost to her unfinished world journey. Through the Reconnect Program, Clemons connected with the worldly and her professors. She named respective module who helped and inspired her on the way, specifically Dr. Michele McConnell, adjunct prof of English, who helped her get acceptable up successful the program; Alison Mandaville, prof of English who instilled a consciousness of excellence to her writing; and Dr. Amila Becirbegovic, subordinate prof of German lit and captious theory, whose “genocide, representation and media” people Clemons called “one of the astir fascinating courses I person taken successful my life.”
“From the start, Donna stood retired successful the cohort arsenic idiosyncratic who is profoundly funny astir the satellite and anxious to prosecute successful challenging issues successful people and with her classmates,” Mandaville said. “She is capable to deftly link idiosyncratic and section cognition and experiences to nationalist and planetary contexts. Her beingness successful people brings this invaluable beingness acquisition to enrich learning for each the different students. She serves arsenic a relation exemplary of lifelong learning and intelligence persistence.”
Unlike her younger counterparts, stepping into a satellite of caller possibilities, Clemons’ graduation marked a antithetic benignant of triumph. Having already navigated the skies arsenic a formation attendant and recovered fulfillment successful her enactment astatine the Kings County Office of Education, the accepted excitement of embarking connected a vocation was absent.
“I’ve had 2 careers. Wonderful. And present I’m finishing what radical usually equate arsenic indispensable for the beginning,” Clemons said.
Still, adjacent astatine 68, Clemons is looking guardant to the opportunities her grade volition unlock, but determination is nary urgent need. Instead, her accomplishment stands arsenic a testament to her enduring committedness to learning and idiosyncratic growth, a travel she had punctuated with life’s galore detours and accomplishments.
“It’s been a joyousness moving with Donna precisely due to the fact that she takes her learning precise seriously, enjoying it for its ain sake, not chiefly for what it volition ‘get’ her successful presumption of wealth oregon career,” Mandaville said. “She is simply a stellar illustration of however learning is simply a lifelong quality endeavor; she is an inspiration to those who deliberation it’s excessively precocious to proceed their intelligence growth. It’s ne'er excessively late.”
As Donna accepts her diploma, it’s not with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a novice, but the quiescent restitution of idiosyncratic who knows that life’s astir invaluable lessons person already been learned, successful the schoolroom and beyond.
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Image caption – Donna-HanfordHigh-50-reunion.jpg: Donna astatine the Hanford High School 50-year reunion.
