It’s never too late to follow your dreams.
That’s what Gloria Stowers, the most senior graduate from Kennesaw State University this fall, said before she walked at her commencement ceremony on Dec. 12.
Stowers, who is 70 years old, earned a bachelor’s degree in art education from KSU’s College of the Arts after a near 50-year hiatus in her education.
“There is no end to learning and doing,” said Stowers.
Born and raised in Marietta, Stowers grew up in the Cobb County School District as it was being integrated.
She attended Roberts Elementary in Acworth, which was one of the county’s all-Black elementary schools, and graduated from North Cobb High School in 1972, just a few years after the district voted to begin integration in 1965.
Credit: Annie Mayne
Credit: Annie Mayne
Stowers said the education offered to her — and many of the Black students in Cobb at the time — was insufficient.
“The schools that were predominately all Black had less. By the time we integrated, we were already behind. Yes, we were graduating, but we were still behind,” Stowers said. “I was finishing high school, but I felt like I might have been at a 10th- or 11th-grade level. I realized when I got to college, there were still pieces missing.”
Stowers said her parents were only able to achieve an elementary level of education, and that they would “be shining” to know their daughter earned a bachelor’s degree.
With a deep understanding of the role education plays in shaping one’s opportunities, Stowers made it a personal goal for everyone in her immediate family to graduate from college.
“Education is essential to making your pathway in life easier,” Stowers said. “The education I got emphasized my possibilities.”
Stowers said when she graduated high school, she was focused on getting a job and making a living, and didn’t think college was in the cards for her.
“My attitude, at that point, was let me just get out of high school and get a job,” said Stowers. “I was in a poverty state. I wanted to eat. I wanted an apartment that was clean. I wanted the essentials of life, I thought. But that was the bare minimum.”
Her path to university was winding, including a career in accounting and the rearing of her three children — Sasha, Maya, and Dijon — whom she raised in Smyrna.
Stowers was left a single mother after her husband, Theodore Stowers, died when her children were just 1, 5, and 11 years old.
“I was in a state of shock,” Stowers said, reflecting on the years following her husband’s death. “Life is never the way you expect it to be.”
Her husband had been one of her biggest supporters, and before he died, encouraged her to go to college.
Credit: Annie Mayne
Credit: Annie Mayne
“My husband and I were together one day, and he had this little figurine. It was like a tiger,” Stowers said. “I told him I wanted to go to college, and he said, ‘Go get ‘em tiger.’”
Stowers collected her diploma in a tiger-print graduation cap.
“He’s celebrating with me, for sure,” Stowers said, smiling.
Teaching is something that Stowers said comes naturally to her, but with the degree, she feels better equipped to continue instructing across all artistic mediums to the children she helped student teach at Baker Elementary in Acworth, and the ones she is contracted to teach at summer camps and Montessori schools in the area.
Getting her degree is just one of many milestones left in Stower’s life.
“It feels really good to complete this journey, but my life is full of many journeys,” Stowers said. “It’s not like ‘oh I’m putting all my things into one basket.’ My life is surrounded by baskets.”
Credit: Marietta Daily Journal
Credit: Marietta Daily Journal
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