Conventional wisdom says if you drop out of college, odds are you'll never go back and earn your degree. Conventional wisdom never met Cleveland Holmes.
More than 20 years after leaving South Carolina State University behind and entering the working world, Holmes finally finished what he started on Saturday when he graduated from Claflin University with a bachelor's degree in sociology and criminal justice administration.
Holmes was able to return to school through the Continuing Education program at Claflin, going to classes at night several times a week. Holmes was enrolled year-round, even taking classes during the summer, which allowed him to complete his degree in only three years.
For Holmes, a former supervisor at now closed local plant, CCX Fiberglass, earning his criminal justice degree represents a monumental first step toward beginning a lifelong dream of working in law enforcement.
It's also giving the 43-year-old opportunities and a new hope for a brighter future. He wants others like him to know it's also possible for them, even though they might not think so because of their hectic lives and busy careers.
"I'm very grateful that I've got my education," said Holmes. "I just want the people out there to know it's never too late to get your education. That's something nobody can ever take away from you.
"If you try, there are programs to help you. You can do it by being committed, having strong supporters and doing your best. You don't have to go fulltime. You can go along and along. But if you just try — if you make one step, God will make two."
His diploma in hand Saturday, Holmes had reached a milestone in what he says has been a lengthy and emotionally difficult voyage, during which both his wife and his career were taken from him.
Holmes reflected on his journey last Thursday, less than 48 hours before he was set to take that walk across the stage to receive his diploma.
A talented football player for the former Walterboro High School, Holmes had enrolled at S.C. State in 1988 with hopes of continuing his athletic career, but an injury cost him that dream.
A youthful lack of discipline and foresight later led him to neglect his studies and eventually to drop out of college. Another dream was deferred.
Holmes returned to Walterboro in 1990, regrouped and went to work, taking a job as a mover and deliveryman for the now closed Heilig-Meyers furniture store.
There, Holmes says, he says he was making only a few hundred dollars every two weeks. The job barely kept the bills paid, and Holmes was beginning to look toward the future.
He had met the woman he would soon marry, Shelia Daniels, and was trying to figure out how to provide the type of life he thought she deserved as his wife, and the type of life he wanted for himself, too.
Holmes was still struggling to make ends meet when he had a chance encounter with high school friend Landis Bunton, who told Holmes about his good-paying job at CCX, and helped him get a temporary position with the plant.
By 1994, Holmes and Shelia had married, and he was working at CCX fulltime. By 1999, Holmes had been promoted to third shift supervisor. Along the way, he and Shelia, who worked in the records department at a local doctor's office, had become parents to three young boys.
A good job, a happy family — life certainly appeared to be going Holmes' way. Then, six years ago, it began to come apart.
Shelia, his wife of nearly 20 years, was tragically killed in Sept. 2008 when a tire blew out on a van in which she and several other women from St. Peter's AME Church were riding on their way back from a conference in Bluffton.
The group was heading north on Interstate 95 near the Crosby Corner Road overpass when the tire blew, sending the van off the roadway and up an embankment. The van flipped several times. Shelia suffered multiple massive traumas, and died at the scene.
Two years later, Holmes lost his career, as well, when CCX announced it was shutting its doors. Holmes was finally laid off in 2010. With that, Holmes was at one of the lowest points of his adult life.
Had he been able to see the future, Holmes would have known he was at the jumping-off point from which he was going to begin a new journey in his life.
"I'm not sure if my wife dying and my job closing down wasn't meant to happen," Holmes said Thursday. "I was left with nothing, and now here it is three years later, I've got my education and I'm graduating on Saturday."
It had all been foreshadowed a decade before. About four years before her death, Holmes recalled, Shelia had begun to encourage him to return to school.
Working the third shift and with the family still depending on him to work fulltime, however, Holmes didn't think he had the time, so he encouraged Shelia to go back to school instead.
That's what she did, enrolling at USC Salkehatchie as a part-time student. Still, Holmes said, his wife continued to encourage him to make the move himself, and believed that one day he would be a college graduate.
It would be another three years after Shelia died before Cleveland started in that direction.
Hitting rock-bottom after her death and the loss of his job ironically provided solid ground in which the dream of returning to college could take root.
It began at the S.C. Workforce Development office here in Colleton County. Holmes was eligible to receive free training in a new specialty since he had been laid off from his previous job.
Training was available for dozens of trades and manual labor jobs, but Holmes didn't want to do any of those; instead, he decided it was time he got serious about completing his education.
Stephanie Ferguson and Lakeyla Bright-Haynes at Lowcountry Workforce Development then told Holmes about Claflin's opportunities for non-traditional and students like him, he said, providing him with the information he needed to begin his pursuit.
Bills didn't stop coming in the mail simply because he went back to school, however. Holmes still had not found fulltime work, so he had to find ways to keep the bills paid while also going to class, which was costing him money, as well.
Holmes, who has since remarried to his high school sweetheart, Leslie Williams, worked odd jobs whenever he could to help his family get by.
He was also fortunate that his children were receiving his late wife's Social Security benefits, which helped keep food in their mouths and clothes on their backs.
It wasn't always enough, and school wasn't a cake walk for him either. Holmes said sometimes he didn't know how he was going to keep going.
"There were times I would sit out in my car before class studying for a test, and I would just cry," said Holmes.
He likely wouldn't have come through, he said, if it hadn't been for the support of his family, friends and the community.
Many times, Holmes said, one of his friends at Bush Beaters Hunting Club in Red Root would slip him $50 to help pay for gas to get to school, or his fellow Masons at the Widowmite 475 Lodge would secretly take up a collection to help him pay his bills.
Holmes said he had a computer, but not a printer, and there were times when he would need to print a research paper for class. When he would go to Lowcountry Office Supply, they would often let him print his papers for half-price, and sometimes for free.
Holmes also received a great deal of help in the beginning from Lowcountry Workforce Development, which through the federal WIA program paid for his gas to go back and forth to school in his first year, and also paid for child care and his books for classes.
Holmes says he was blessed to have been given as much support as he was from the employees at Workforce Development, his friends and family. To pay them back, Holmes knew he couldn't give up. He had to earn his degree.
"When you've got people going out of their way to help you get to the next level, you don't want to let them down," Holmes said.
"If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been able to make it. I also didn't want to let my deceased wife down, or let my kids down, so I knew I had to do this."
Holmes pursued a degree in criminal justice because it's something he's always been fascinated by and passionate about being a part of, he said.
"As a little kid coming up through the years, I always wanted to be involved in it," said Holmes, who claims he was always the cop when playing Cops and Robbers as a child.
"I want to be able to help protect and serve the people of this community. Law enforcement is a dream and a passion of mine, because it will allow me to do that. When you do something you love to do and want to do, you'll be successful."
Holmes, who graduated with a 3.3 GPA and maintained the honor roll throughout his three years, says he must now decide whether to go immediately into a career in law enforcement, or if he will continue his education in graduate school so that he can start out with a better job in a few years.
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