In Beasley Coliseum in Pullman on Saturday, a fan group of 16 applauded loudly when our new son-in-law stood along with other first-generation college graduates.
Chase Conaway, a 2019 W.F. West graduate, earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Washington State University. Like my daughter in May, he graduated magna cum laude.
But unlike my daughter, Chase was among probably 50 percent of students who were the first in their family to earn a four-year degree. His mother, April Squires Conaway, joined the Army in 1995 immediately after graduating from Mark Morris High School in Longview. She met Chase’s father, Patrick, while serving in the military. Their eldest son enlisted in the Army a decade ago, while their second son is in banking. Chase’s younger sister works at Great Wolf Lodge.
“I’m immensely proud of Chase, not only for being a first-generation college graduate but also for doing it with minimal student debt, working part time, and supporting himself the whole way through,” April said. “I was of very little help to Chase when it came to understanding anything about college, from admissions to FAFSA. (We learned a lot together!)
“To watch all his endeavors come to fruition, knowing he accomplished that on his own, is inspiring and truly awesome.”
Also in attendance at the graduation were Chase’s father and April’s mother, her grandmother, her sister, all of her children and their spouses, and two of Chase’s high school friends and wedding groomsmen who graduated in May — Christopher Beatty, a first-generation college graduate who earned a degree in finance from Eastern Washington University, and Dylan Jensen, who graduated in nursing from Gonzaga University. My husband and I sat next to my daughter and his grandson, who also attends WSU.
As Chase received his degree, my newlywed daughter swiped tears from her cheeks.
“I’m so proud of him!” she said.
So was his great-grandmother, Dolores Tippery, of Toutle.
“I’m very proud of him and happy to be there for the first great-grandson to graduate from college,” she said.
His grandmother, Jeanette Tippery, also of Toutle, expressed pride in her grandson’s accomplishment, especially after life changes the past few years including the COVID-19 pandemic and his parents’ divorce.
“It is wonderful that he could plow through and achieve his goal,” she said. “I know he worked hard, and he was so good just to take it all in stride. I loved it when he started working at Ferdinand’s (Ice Cream Shoppe at the WSU Creamery) and worked his way up to be, as I say, ‘the Head Cheese.’
“So now he is at another crossroads in his life and has a lot to look forward to. I wish him the very best and love him very much. Go Cougs!”
Graduating from college is always an accomplishment, but even more so when it’s not expected. My friend, former Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund, also a first-generation college graduate, was a single working mother when she graduated from St. Martin’s University in Olympia. As she walked in the processional, she recalled seeing her young son waving at her beside her parents, Dutch immigrants who operated a farm in Onalaska. Tears streamed down her father’s cheeks.
My inspiration for pursuing a college degree stemmed from watching my parents return to college in the early 1970s with six children between the ages of three and 12.
After my mother met her Prince Charming, against her father’s wishes, she dropped out of St. Mary’s School of Nursing at Rochester, Indiana, to marry. She had previously completed a year at St. Mary’s at Notre Dame.
My grandfather always told my mom that parents can give their children two things — a good education and a good name — that nobody can take away. He told Mom he paid his secretary at Hyster Corp. more than my dad earned working in a lumberyard.
But love is blind, or at the very least, perhaps impractical.
My parents started a family, bringing five girls and a boy into the world within nine years. My dad moved from the lumberyard to selling insurance. But money was tight, food scarce, and paychecks few and far between. We picked wild asparagus alongside roads and railroad tracks for creamed asparagus on toast. We didn’t realize until we were adults that most people put meat or cheese between slices of bread with sandwich spread. For us, sandwiches consisted of bread and spread. Mom paid more for babysitting than she earned at JCPenney. Medical bills mounted as she underwent five surgeries within four years for a pulmonary embolism, adhesions and peritonitis.
Finally, Mom told me years later, the fairy tale burst. She returned to college to finish her nurses’ training. Before long, Dad enrolled too. He didn’t want people to know, I think in case he failed. Both Mom and Dad worked nights and weekends while attending classes in Denver on weekdays alongside returning Vietnam veterans and students half their age.
Despite my reputation for having a big mouth, I kept the secret quiet as we rose early, saw ourselves off to school in the mornings, and returned home to do household chores and prepare meals for a family of eight. We looked into cupboards and threw together whatever we found there with pasta, giving each concoction a creative name: Dad’s Disaster, Mom’s Mess, Cathleen’s Catastrophe, Sue’s Slop, Julie’s Junk, Tony’s Tornado, etc. We even named one dish Penia Moolah — penia, meaning “lack of” in medical terminology. Another dish tasted so good we wrote down the recipe for Colorado Casserole.
I used to quiz Mom on her medical terminology, so by sixth grade, I had learned a lot of medical terms. For an English class, Mom wrote an essay titled “The Peanut Butter Term Paper,” describing how she stayed up all night typing her paper for class only to discover in the morning that one of the kids had opened the peanut butter jar and left the lid on top of the pages.
One time, my parents received manna from heaven while driving home from Denver. Mom spotted a box on the road’s shoulder and urged my dad to pull over. She retrieved it to discover a brand-new tape recorder inside. It must have fallen from a car or truck. Only a corner was damaged. It proved a godsend for recording their college classes.
When Mom earned a bachelor’s in nursing and Dad completed his associate degree to become a registered nurse, their cheering squad of rambunctious kids could scarcely contain themselves. We celebrated their pinning ceremonies. We moved first to southeast Colorado and then to Vancouver, Washington, to follow Mom’s job with the Veterans Administration Hospital. Dad worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital, now PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center.
When I graduated from high school, I wanted to earn my bachelor’s degree the easy way — as a young coed without the encumbrance of six children. We learn from the examples of our parents, and I’d admired my mom and dad both so much for pulling our family from poverty into the middle class.
While raising our children, I channeled my grandfather, who died when I was 6 months old, and prayed every night for us to see our children grow up, graduate from college, marry and start raising families of their own. Both my children graduated from college — our son from my alma mater, the University of Washington, and our daughter from my husband’s, Washington State University.
What’s even better is that they have jobs in their fields. My son works in Finland for an American government software consultant, while my daughter works in the histology lab at the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostics Lab at WSU. Chase is employed with WSU’s IT Department.
College isn’t for everyone. Many people achieve great success without ever attending college or graduating. Take Bill Gates, for example, who dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft.
And Chase’s great-grandfather’s brother, Miles Tippery, a 1934 Silver Lake High School graduate and entrepreneur who served as a radio technician in the Coast Guard during World War II. He then collaborated with several men he met in the military to form a company: Tektronix.
But for those who pursue a college degree and graduate, congratulations. Nobody can take away that accomplishment.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
