A Supreme Goes To College - singer Mary Wilson - Brief Article

Ebony, April, 2001 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

Mary Wilson earns degree at NYU

THE idea came to Mary Wilson at the end of a deserted road, after a 1994 auto accident that severely injured her and claimed the life of her 14-year-old son. "When my baby Rafi died, it changed my life," she says. "All of a sudden I found myself alone with nothing but my career."

It wasn't the first time she had found herself alone, but it was perhaps the most devastating. "I'd been in that spot before," she says "when Diane and Flo left the group [Supremes], and each time that happened to me I always said this prayer, `God, show me what to do.'"

Tragedy and the prayer led to two life-altering decisions. The first was to leave Los Angeles and settle in New York. The second--astoundingly--was to enroll in college.

After chart-topping hits, command performances and the jet-set lifestyle, why would the Supremes founding member Mary Wilson decide to live the life of a student--attending classes, writing papers and taking tests?

The answer is simple: College had always been on her mind. "There's always this feeling that you don't feel as good as the other person," she says. "People look at artists like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye--and when they die, people say they had such great lives, how could they have been sad? I feel it's because inside you always feel inadequate."

Wilson had an even more compelling reason to question herself. Her late mother, Johnnie Mae Wilson, never learned to read or write, and it was her dream for one of her children to go to college. In her book, Dreamgirl & Supreme Faith: My Life as a Supreme, Wilson says "... for years I feared that I might grow up to be just like [my mother]. I always secretly feared that ideas and information eluded me."

Locked in constant contract negotiations and court battles throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s with Motown, her former record label, she says she began to doubt her ability to think and reason. But the doubts were groundless as she discovered by enrolling in New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and earning her associate's degree.

"I feel so much more secure in myself, because of that education," she says now, after maintaining a "B" average and completing her studies under rigors most students could only imagine.

Hardly a typical undergraduate, Wilson was "traveling and doing my papers on the plane and in limos, in the hotels and backstage before going on stage," she says, laughing. A laptop computer became her constant companion. She used Federal Express to return some of her class papers and assignments.

She took her classes seriously. One student recalls that she showed up for class in costume and stage makeup, sat down, took notes and then left to do a show.

Because most of her fellow students and professors didn't know until the end who she was, she was treated like any other student. "I was very lucky because most of the time no one found out until toward the very end of the class. I was able to be myself and for once in my life to really be normal, and I enjoyed it very much."

In the middle of her final papers and exams last year came the request to join Diana Ross' ill-fated Supremes reunion tour, a request Wilson turned down. "She [Diana] just caught me at the wrong time," Wilson says. "Normally I'm very even-tempered, but I was in the middle of my final papers. And they were calling back and forth, and I think the time I spoke to Diane was when I had been going back and forth and doing one of my final papers."

But Wilson says her new knowledge gave her new strength in the middle of the arduous tour negotiations. "I was going through too much to get this degree, and I was not standing for anything that wasn't right."

In order to be present for the small recognition reception for mid-year graduates, Wilson left a gig in Hawaii and traveled back to New York, in the middle of the winter. "When I flew back for the ceremonies, I was really going through one of the biggest moments of my life--it was just a beautiful moment, and this wasn't even the big ceremony, but I felt so good about myself. I had achieved what I wanted."

The one thing she got out of her studies was "self-confidence," she says. "I told myself I already am what I want to become, so I was just hoping to pass my classes. But my last semester I was maintaining a B average."

Having completed the classwork, Wilson plans to attend the major cap-and-gown graduation in May.

Supremely talented, on stage and off, Wilson plans to continue performing. She is producing and starring in a tour of Sophisticated Ladies. "The music industry has put [veteran] Black artists out to pasture," she says. "Our livelihood was selling records, and now all you can do is concerts. Most veteran acts can't get a record deal," she says.

Although Wilson hasn't had a hit record since the heyday of the Supremes, she hasn't missed a day of work. "I just feel you always have to add on to your life. You can't rest on your laurels, and I've been reinventing myself all these years."