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At age 55, on my 5th attempt, I finished college (with a 4.0)

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Ralph Strangis, Contributor

The December morning breaks gray and bleak. A brief seasonal cold front winks at North Texas as I drive up the makeshift disjointed Interstate 35, which is under construction at various points between Uptown Dallas and Denton. Bursts of icy air bump against my Jeep, cars lurch and stop and lurch and stop. I'm taking this drive for the last time.

It is the day I graduate from college, 37 years and change after first enrolling. I'm 55 years old and I find it hard to describe how I feel. I'm relieved for sure that the circle is finally closing. The day marks the culmination of a very long battle between college and me.

During the last 12 months I've chopped down the last of it, 33 credit hours and a 4.0 average this time around. This time I feel a part of it. The fifth time apparently is the charm.

I'm the oldest of four and the last of us to get a degree.


I've thought a lot over these months about promises and hopes, about time invested and the subsequent gains and losses, the economics of the whole thing, the relative return on investment. I've watched how hard it is for these young kids. How few know where they're headed. How financially indebted and pragmatically ill-equipped many of them will be even after they walk the stage today.

The world is a hard place. Different than it used to be. Or is it?

How did we get here? How did I get here?

From Sambiase to Ellis Island

Salvatore "Sam" Strangis wanted to provide for himself and his family and the world was a hard place.

He thought only of the beautiful Sambiase in Italy's Calabria region and the family still behind during the harsh trip from his birthplace across the Atlantic in 1906. He buried these memories when he stepped off the boat and onto Ellis Island. His father told him of the opportunity waiting at the end of the journey.

<p><span style="font-size: 1em; background-color: transparent;">Sam, Joe, Ralph Sr&nbsp;</span><br></p><p></p>

Sam, Joe, Ralph Sr 

Sam was 8 years old. Sam wouldn't be going to school.

Ralph Strangis is Sam's youngest of three, born in June 1936 to Sam and Dorothy (née Nuzzi) Strangis. The eldest, Joe, 13 years Ralph's senior, went off to war. His older sister Rita got married. Neither of them went to college.

Ralph Strangis is my father and he watched his father, this hard and emotionless man, bent and finally broken by the years of shoveling coal and snow, perpetually hunched over with pain and clothed in a foul stench that wouldn't wash off because of burrowing with the others through the Minneapolis sewers.

Ralph Strangis Sr. would not be digging ditches.

Ralph Strangis Sr. went to college, and then to law school. And on a beautiful early summer day in 1960 he found himself standing with thousands of others on the field at Memorial Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus wearing a cap and gown and ready to make the walk.

Arriving at Wooten Hall

Everything is different and little has changed, I thought to myself when I got to my first class at Wooten Hall at the University of North Texas. It was an old and stuffy brick-walled schoolroom with fluorescent lights and tiered with plastic chairs with flip-down faux-wood writing surfaces.

It was U.S. history and there were about 100 of us in our seats as class began. I was one of the few with a pen and a notebook. Today's students type their notes deftly and quickly on a keyboard. Richard Lowe is a wonderful lecturer, old-school all the way, and that gave me comfort.

But as good as he is -- and to be sure he's very good -- we still learned by rote. We were graded by rubric. We all scrambled to get the information from the board or screen into our notebooks or tablets to memorize later to spit back onto a test. I was rusty; they were not.

I walked the campus and studied and read and ate at the Student Union. I felt like a kid again, but then I've always felt like a kid. I've spent my life around kids. It used to be young hockey players or office staffers, then it was college students. It's the fountain of youth and I drink in all I can. We joked and talked and shared common struggles. I wonder what they thought of me.

Off to law school

Sam was in his mid-50s, around the same age that I am now, when rheumatoid arthritis ripped the shovel out of his calloused hands and the heavy boots off his blistered feet. Dorothy would care for him between her shifts as a waitress at the family Italian restaurant and her other job as a nursery-school teaching assistant. She wrote poetry when she had time.

Ralph Strangis Sr. went to college and then to law school. He went to class, worked at the restaurant too, and hit the books. When he got home at night he saw little bits of money Dorothy had scrounged for him on his dresser. In 1954 college cost $67 a quarter. They made it work.

He never knew any lawyers and had no sense of the success he would experience. He knew only one thing: Ralph Strangis Sr. would not be digging ditches.

Failing speech, of all things

Failing speech communications in that first semester in the fall of 1979 at the University of Minnesota cut right through my gut. I'd been making speeches of one kind or another since I could talk. I knew what I wanted to do. I got a tape recorder for my 10th birthday and sat in the grade school gym and called basketball and floor hockey games.

College? I don't know. Did I need college? My dad never overtly pushed it, but frequently reminded me of the life he made for us because of his education. He's the smartest guy I know. It's his voice I hear lots of times when I hear my inner voice.

College cost about $1,000 a quarter back when I tried it for the first and second and third time. It wasn't a lot of money and my dad had put money away for all of us anyway. I worked in a used-record store for spending money. I had a shift on the college radio station. I kept calling games into a tape recorder. Nobody ever had to tell me to be excited about what I wanted to do for a living. Very few teachers taught me what I'd really need to know when I got out there.

One fine day on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, I finally had enough. I was impatient, I was bored, I was scared, and I was young. I dropped out and didn't look back for many years.

There were so many peaks and valleys before finally landing with the Minnesota North Stars and later with them in Dallas. I had no degree but learned hard lessons and life skills.

The world is a hard place.

As a boy I watched my father get up every morning early and greet the day with joy. I watched him come home at dinner. I worked in his office one summer and saw what it took. I saw the energy in his step, the respect he gave and commanded. That's what I wanted. College or not -- I knew only one thing.

Ralph Strangis Jr. would not be digging ditches.

Building success

Sam got excited only rarely. Sometimes it was when he was in his chair watching wrestling on Saturday nights. The other times were when Ralph came home and showed him his grades. He was especially proud when his youngest brought news that he finished first in his class during his final year in law school.

Sam died in 1965 at age 67. He never got to see much of Ralph's success.

The world is a hard place.

Ralph Strangis Sr. and Ralph Strangis Jr.
Ralph Strangis Sr. and Ralph Strangis Jr.

Ralph Strangis Sr. had done a little too much celebrating the night before to recall everything about the graduation ceremony. He remembers that they had switched tassels with the nurses. He was wearing the wrong color tassel for the ceremony.

Debt-free and surrounded by plum prospects and lifelong friends, Ralph Strangis Sr. started building. College was a good deal and he made the most of it. Today he is successful in every measure of the word and in ways he couldn't possibly imagine back then. He's worked hard for every bit of it.

When his grandchildren began arriving, he started educational funds for each of them, saying to his children, "This is an opportunity, not an expectation for them. The world is a hard place and each of us must find our own path."

Smiling and worried

Ralph Strangis Jr.&nbsp;
Ralph Strangis Jr. 

I started again in 2000 at UNT because I meet a very caring adviser named Jerry Wircenski. He helped me then and came out of retirement to help me again this time. I probably wouldn't finish without him. College costs more now and my résumé already looks pretty good. He told me to hang in there. He told me to enjoy the journey.

The average college student today is in debt almost $40,000 upon graduation. These kids work hard in school and have part-time jobs -- and they tell me they're scared. They tell me maybe they will have to take jobs they don't want just to pay off the debt. Very few talk of making it big. They just want to make it. They're not lazy or greedy. They want what we all want and don't know if they'll get there.

The world is a hard place, and they don't want to dig ditches.

I think about this as I get up from my seat and move toward the stage wearing cap and gown. I think about each of them as they move one at a time to get the degree for which they've worked so hard.

There are hundreds of huge, little moments that morning, and I'm smiling and worried at the same time. I'm one of them now.

And due to a bookstore mix-up, I'm wearing the wrong color tassel.

Ralph Strangis is a writer, actor and motivational speaker in Dallas and frequent columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ralphstrangis