Mom goes to college: three sons support student mother with money and love - Virginia Hudson - Interview

Ebony, May, 2003 by Marsha Gilbert

LIKE most college students, Virginia Hudson needed financial support from home. But unlike her classmates at Miles College, Hudson didn't get that help from her parents, but from her three sons. At 58, Hudson is more than 30 years older than her fellow students, but age didn't deter the ambitious mother from pursuing her dream of getting a college education. She had married at age 19 and became a mom at 20. After two divorces and working hard to put her three sons through college, she decided it was her turn to get the education she had always wanted. And her sons, Charles, Michael and Kelvin Hudson, all pitched in financially and otherwise to help their mother earn her degree. After all, she had put her education on hold to raise them and make sure they graduated from college.

"I always wanted to be a teacher," says Hudson, who had worked as a receptionist, clerk typist and secretary. She graduates in May with a major in secondary education language arts.

Hudson ,had attended Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis for a year, but she felt she needed, to live on-campus to cut down on distractions.

"She tried transferring to another school, but felt like she was getting the runaround, like they didn't want her," says her son Michael, 34, who-works in pharmaceutical sales. "They said they lost her application and changed the amount of fees."

In 1998, the student mom enrolled at Miles College, a small Black school where she felt welcomed. Like other students, she wanted to live on-campus, have a roommate and not be treated differently because of her age. So, Hudson sold her house in Indianapolis and moved to Miles College in Fairfield, Ala., outside Birmingham. Her sons helped her apply for grants and loans to pay the $10,000 annual tuition and began pooling money for the additional expenses their mother would incur living on-campus.

Depending on money from her sons was a learning experience, she says. "I couldn't demand anything from them because I was dependent on them," Hudson says. "It taught me how to ask and to say `Thank you."'

Her sons helped to pay travel costs for their mom to visit them during holidays and school breaks. At times she stayed with Charles in Chicago, Michael in Atlanta or with Kelvin and his wife and three children in Indianapolis. The sons also covered her expenses to tour with the Miles College choir and made sure she always had money.

When she needed a computer, printer, scanner, and phone in her dorm room, and when she needed her wisdom teeth removed, her sons also covered those expenses.

Like many parents of college students, the sons kept money in a bank account so that Hudson could draw from it as needed. And when she stayed with them during breaks, they insisted on paying her for cleaning and cooking. While home with them, they bought her new clothes and other necessities.

"They were insistent that I use the money for the reasons they sent it to me," says Hudson, who has work-study jobs in the school's computer lab and as a part-time resident advisor. "They might want me to go to the hair salon, but I would want to buy groceries."

Hudson also had to adjust to living away from familiar surroundings on a college campus with people younger than her own children. When she first arrived at Miles College, she was reluctant to ask questions in class. She also was self-conscious about being the oldest person in class and in her dorm, and the fact that some students at first did not want to associate with her. "I thought about leaving school, but thought `What else can you do?' So I stayed to get my education," Hudson says.

It didn't take long for her to get pulled into campus activities, going to school events and dating a man from the area. "She's usually wearing clothes with the college's name and will be the loudest one calling out to players from the stands," her son Michael says. "When I finally caught up with her on the phone after a pep rally, I asked, `When are you studying young lady?'"

But the energetic mom learned she had to cut back on activities and get used to studying. She stopped dating and began using the same study rules for herself that she had for her sons when they were growing up. Evenings consisted of homework, dinner, watching the evening news, more studying, and then sleep. Growing up, the boys weren't allowed to talk on the phone or watch television for entertainment Monday through Thursday.

"We had to read to her if we didn't have homework," recalls Kelvin, who owns a waste removal and recycling business, as did their father. But when he got to college and his friends were struggling because they didn't have good study habits, "thanked her every day," he says.

With improved study habits, Mother Hudson, by her junior year, turned her interest in campus life into a run for student government association president. She won the election, beating a popular football player and fraternity member. Some of her biggest accomplishments as student president were getting benches placed around campus, the removal of campus signs that warned students that making loud noise after midnight could result in a $500 fine and getting the campus curfew lifted.