Six years ago, a drunk driver nearly killed recent Harris-Stowe State University graduate Christopher Pate – leaving him with a severe brain injury, a broken collarbone and a collapsed lung.
When he woke up from a coma six weeks later, he didn’t remember how to walk, write or feed himself.
“I basically had to begin life again as a baby,” Pate said. “I didn’t even know how to add or subtract. But in the fall of 2010, I returned to Harris Stowe. I had received some advice about becoming a greeter at Wal-Mart, but I knew I could do better than that.”
With support of the university staff and classmates, Pate said he was able to push past his challenges with learning, the intense migraines that came with his brain injury and even the suicidal thoughts that haunted him. So when Pate walked across the stage to receive his diploma on May 16, the entire class of 2015 jumped to their feet. He graduated with honors.
“When he walked, we stood and we went crazy and cried because we had all been there with him on his journey,” said Jazminique Holley, a senior class representative who delivered the special presentation by the classes of 2014-15 at the commencement.
This spring, Pate started a career as a life transformation coach with the nonprofit Connections to Success, where he interned in the fall 2014. There, he helps unemployed individuals return to work. And Pate says he owes every bit of his success to his “beautiful mother” and HSSU family.
“They pay me to help people make their lives better,” he said. “I didn’t have the passion for it before the accident. Because so many people helped me throughout my journey, my heart opened up and softened to this career.”
When Holley gave her speech at commencement, she told her fellow classmates, “We are survivors.”
Holley said that the 120 students who graduated this May are a tight-knit family, who had seen each other through obstacles in single parenting, failed relationships and marriages, low-paying jobs, homelessness, unplanned pregnancies and loss of loved ones to senseless gun violence.
“But we never let those obstacles get in the way of what we set out to accomplish,” she said. “We survived. Class of 2015, they see our glory but do not know our stories.”
Holley’s own college journey started at Howard University, where she achieved a 3.5 GPA her freshman year. But because of financial problems, she had to leave Howard. She enrolled in Harris-Stowe when she returned to St. Louis, but she said she was “bitter, broken and hot-headed.” She got pregnant her first semester at Harris-Stowe.
“I was a mess,” she told The St. Louis American. “My teachers – I don’t know what they saw in me, but they basically rebuilt and revamped me.”
Her professors practically set up a nursery in the College of Education office and helped her with baby supplies. They allowed her to bring her baby to class and would even pick her up from home, if she needed.
“They did everything to make sure I reached graduation,” she said. “I ended up graduating with above a 3.0. I am forever indebted to Harris-Stowe. It’s a unique place. We do not leave the same way we came.”
Holley said Harris-Stowe president Dwaun J. Warmack’s speech was almost identical to her own, drawing on some of the same examples of obstacles that students overcame. To her, it was confirmation of how close Warmack and the entire university team is to their students’ experiences.
ESSENCE magazine Editor-in-Chief Vanessa K. De Luca delivered the commencement address, which Holley described as “raw and realistic.”
“She quieted the room down because she was so humble,” Holley said. “We appreciated that it was more like a conversation.”
Thelma V. Cook, chairwoman of the Harris-Stowe Board of Regents, and noted philanthropist and humanitarian Thelma Steward both received honorary doctorate degrees at the ceremony.
For Holley, the moment that she’ll always remember is when she and her classmates moved their tassels on their graduation caps, noting that they were now graduates.
“That was the moment we were waiting for,” she said. “We all looked around at each other. It was an emotional moment for us. It was so small to someone else, but it was so monumental for us.”
Follow this reporter on Twitter @rebeccarivas.
