Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My bucket list is not only complete, my bucket runneth over. My portrait of the Beloved Woman Who Shared My Name now hangs in the Wellstar School of Nursing at Kennesaw State University, where she received her degree at the age of 45. That’s correct. At a time when most of her friends were winding down, she was just getting wound up.

Some of you are familiar with her story, but as a personal privilege, may I share it again? We met in high school. She was a member of the National Honor Society and was voted Most Dignified by her high school classmates. I didn’t do anything noteworthy except graduate.

In one of the stereotypical cruelties of those times, I headed off to college totally unprepared and unqualified. She went to work as a secretary, as young women of that time were expected to do. It should have been the other way around.

We married and I began my scramble up the corporate ladder while she concentrated on running an efficient household and raising our children as a stay-at-home mom. But something was missing. College. When we returned from a tour of duty in Washington courtesy of the Bell System, we were empty-nesters with two children in college – a son at Furman and a daughter at UGA. That left Mom as the lone family member without having enjoyed the college experience. So we decided it was time for her to go to college. She does. And succeeds. After 25 years away from the schoolbooks, she gets a nursing degree from Kennesaw College, now Kennesaw State University, becomes a registered nurse and enjoys a rewarding career as an occupational nurse at Delta Air Lines.

Having two children in college was a snap. All they needed was money. Having a wife in college was a different matter. I learned to work the dishwasher and the clothes dryer and to balance the checkbook. I learned to tippy-toe across hardwood floors and not make a sound when she was studying algebra. Can I get some love here?

It was during her time at Kennesaw that our son had graduated and was in the throes of breaking up with a longtime girlfriend. Trying to be helpful, Momma mentioned that one of her lab partners had just broken up with her boyfriend. Despite their age differences, the two had become good friends while cutting up dead stuff in lab class. You tend to get to know people pretty well when you are dissecting frogs together, I suppose.

Only out of profound sense of loyalty to her would our son even consider going out with someone his mother recommended, let alone someone who cut up deceased stuff with her. But he agreed. But only for one date. And just as a favor to his mother.

The rest, as they say, is history. Momma’s former classmate is my daughter-in-law, Jackie, the mother of my grandchildren and the grandmother of the four great-grandchildren. Not only did my wife get a superb education in the Kennesaw nursing program, she also secured us a splendid daughter-in-law.

Some might think that this story ended four years ago when the Beloved Woman Who Shared My Name passed away after a brief illness. But, in fact, it was just the beginning. Why not honor her legacy by giving others an opportunity to receive a nursing degree as she did? Thus was born the Jane J. Yarbrough Nursing Scholarship to be awarded to non-traditional students seeking a career change and pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. In addition, a Jane J. Yarbrough Fellowship has been established to allow faculty to look at ways to advance nursing education and to do important research on the subject at KSU.

It is my hope that the example of her determination to succeed will inspire others to enter a profession that is dedicated to doing good. Nursing can be highly stressful. It is not for everyone but for those who feel the calling, they know they are making a positive difference.

The icing on the cake was presenting my painting of the Beloved Woman Who Shared My Name to the Wellstar School of Nursing at Kennesaw State at a special luncheon a couple of weeks ago. Her portrait will hang in a prominent spot in the school and will serve as a reminder to future generations that not only can you dream big dreams, you can achieve them. And she did just that.