Be Better Than Me

“Victor you're back home?!”

That question and the history behind it is seared into my memory. It was January 1983 in what should have been my second semester in college. Since I was home, it was only natural to visit my old high school. I entered the main entrance so I could sneak a peak into the basketball gym, then headed down the hall toward the administration offices. There, a teacher noticed me walking past the school's attendance office where I had been a key-punch operator as a high school senior. That's when she asked and stated at the same time: “Victor you're back home?!” Her tone sounded to me as if she had said, I'm so sorry you couldn't make it in college....It was clear to me that she assumed I had dropped out like so many others from my demographic. My reaction was defensive and perhaps too much so because it did not seem that she believed me when I said: “I got four A’s and a B in my first semester. It’s true.”

I recall leaving that high school visit down on myself as if I DID fail at college. The reality is that I had returned to the Macomb Illinois campus of Western Illinois University (“Western”) for that second semester after the holiday break full of pride from my first semester results. It was a five hour drive from Chicago’s south side. I unpacked my things into my dorm room which had been covered by financial aid funding. So far so good, right?.

Nope.

The 80’s was before the internet days so upon my arrival back on campus after the winter break, I must have gone to look in my school mailbox expecting a written class schedule that others on my dorm floor were chatting about. I found nothing. Puzzled and perhaps a bit naive, I went to the bursar’s office to confirm my class schedule where I learned that all my classes had been dropped. The reason is that I had been deemed ineligible for the state of Illinois scholarship funds that would have paid my tuition and class fees.

Somewhere between the bursar’s office and the financial aid office I was told I would have to leave campus if I did not have $575 to settle the tuition bill. I did not have the money and had no means of getting it.

I only have flash memories of those few days on campus in January 1983 trying to be allowed to attend classes. I remember asking a financial aid counselor - “doesn’t Western need good students who make grades like I did?”

Packing my trunk and finding someone back home to come pick me up would be a lonely and gut-wrenching experience!

The road back home

I was on my way home within a day or so of that conversation with the financial aid lady. A fire was lit by that experience.I probably couldn't have known it then, but with hindsight that Western financial aid ordeal sealed my determination to break molds and do so with an eye toward helping the next generation and others to follow...

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