Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509290094
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now, many years later and many miles away, she was saying it again. This time, Penny was talking about Harvard Yard - centuries-old buildings surrounding the manicured lawns where Longfellow wrote, John Quincy Adams studied for exams and John Kennedy criss-crossed the mosaic of grass and paths on his way to class.
``The Yard,'' surrounded by a high brick wall interrupted by elaborate iron gates, like heavily insulated doors, that shelter students from the cacophony of Harvard Square.
In the Robertson yard at the corner of Roanoke and Bridge streets in Roanoke's Norwich section, the rusted wire gate is pushed open frequently by neighbors and friends. Time-worn chairs invite you to ``set awhile'' on the porch.
Around the corner from Memorial Bridge, well-kept brick homes give way to wood frame houses, their paint dimmed by years of weather and neglect, where mowing patchy grass and planting a few geraniums is the extent of landscaping.
It's a neighborhood of the working poor trying their damndest to make ends meet, able to
feed and clothe their families but with little left for the niceties that are common in neighborhoods not far away.
Walker Foundry looms across the intersection from Theresa's house, at the edge of the industrial section. Tiny company houses sit in a row just outside the factory's gates. Theresa lived in one of them for several years.
The Robertson house has vinyl furniture and tired rugs, still in the browns and oranges that were popular 20 years ago. But there's a wealth that transcends the setting. It's the richness of conversation, of caring and family centered lives. If laughter could be deposited in a bank, the Robertsons would have no trouble sending their two daughters to any college in the country.
Theresa knew early on there would be no money from home for her college education. As a senior at William Fleming High School, she applied to state schools just in case. She applied to Harvard University just to see what would happen.
She was shocked when the Harvard admissions officer called.
``We really want you to come here,'' he said.
The head of the English department phoned too, to tell her how impressed he was with her application essay.
She had written of her neighborhood, of the locals who passed the hours at AAA Discount Center, of the panhandlers she knew by name.
"I learned that you do not have to be rich to be smart," she wrote in the essay on her Harvard application, "that sometimes what may seem like the worst situation to grow up in can turn you into someone you can be proud of."
"God said, `I'm gonna make you poor but I'll give you smart kids,''' Penny Robertson said. "Theresa never knew she was poor. We didn't let her know."
Theresa ranked second in her class, scored 1400 on her College Boards and was admitted to the best programs Roanoke schools had to offer.
The best university in the country wanted her to enroll. But there was a problem.
Tuition and room and board for just one year equaled her parents' gross annual income. Even the generous amount the school offered - combined with other scholarships, loans, grants and work-study - would not make her attendance possible.
``Wait, I'll call you back,'' the admissions officer said.
At a school that attracts the highest-ranking students from all over the world, that admitted less than 10 percent of the applicants for its freshman class, Theresa was considered a big enough fish for them to offer more bait.
They did, and she was hooked.
Her parents resisted. Duke was their choice for her - an outstanding education, including medical school, and close enough to home so that ``if she needs me, I can get to her,'' as her mom put it.
Her parents took out a small loan, stretching their already-tight budget. ``We can't guarantee you anything beyond the first year,'' they had to tell their daughter.
Theresa had her heart set on Harvard. She has never been satisfied with second best.
|n n| The Robertsons always believed education was the doorway to a brighter world for their daughters. Penny read to Theresa and Callie - younger by two years and just as precocious - from the time they were old enough to sit still in her lap.
Theresa was riding in the back seat of the car when her mother heard her read a sign - ``Southern Refrigeration Corporation.'' She was only 4 years old.
Early on, Theresa's teachers realized she was extraordinarily bright, the kind of child who reminds them why they went into teaching.
Teachers gave her special projects, let her work at her own pace and marveled at her abilities. She was one of a handful admitted as a ninth grader to Roanoke's Governor's School for math and science.
``Every year, before school started, Mom would say, `You know, Theresa, this year is going to be harder.'
``I'm still waiting for it to be harder,'' the 18-year-old said.
``Don't you call me from Harvard and tell me it's not hard yet,'' her mother joked.
Her parents encouraged and supported, never pressured.
``Mom always expected us to do well, because she knew we could." Theresa said. "I don't try harder because Mom expects it. I do it because I expect it.
Her dad, Jerry, is a driver for Basham Oil Co. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade to go to work and got his high school equivalency diploma while in the Army.
He prefers to watch the action rather than be in it, but his pride in his daughters is obvious. Whatever they wish is his wish for them.
Penny, whose ability to laugh easily and often has been passed on to Theresa, is an administrative secretary at Lewis-Gale Hospital.
A cousin who attended a community college is the only relative to have gone beyond a high school education.
Allowing their daughter to spend most of her year 700 miles away is a testament to the Robertsons' belief in education as the vehicle to a better life.
``It's the only way for her to break the chain of poverty,'' Penny said. But she keeps a tissue handy when she talks about her daughter leaving home.
|n n| Theresa's introduction to Boston came during one of its infamous Friday-afternoon rush hours. ``I thought we were all going to get killed,'' Theresa said, ``but I was so excited, I was hanging out the window taking pictures.''
When they stumbled upon the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they knew Harvard wasn't far away. But it wasn't until Theresa and her parents had driven around The Yard for a while that she realized where she was.
``This is mine!'' she yelled and almost leaped out of the car. A few steps inside the gate, she stopped, awestruck. It was everything she had dreamed of yet like nothing she had ever seen. Before going to Boston, her longest trips had been to the beach with the family.
She was grateful she had not visited Harvard before she applied.
``If I had seen it before I applied and not gotten in, it would have killed me.''
Her new home, Holworthy Hall, is a long, four-story brick building at one end of The Yard. Her roommates span the country - Yvonne from California, Daryn from outside Chicago, Marya from a suburb 20 minutes away.
They unpacked as they discussed setting up their common room, a large central space where they can study, relax - and talk on the phone.
``We'll need another phone line ...,'' ``...maybe call waiting ...,'' ``...maybe we should share the cost of an answering machine.''
On each desk lay a list of all former occupants of the room. It read like a Who's Who of Boston Brahmins from the 1600s onward - Pinckney, Lowell, Holyoke, Hale - slowly growing more ethnically diverse and finally including the names of women and even its current occupants.
"One of my friends is in John Kennedy's room," Daryn said.
"Ooh, that's kind of eerie," Theresa said.
There were four outlets for computer modems. Marya removed her new Macintosh from its box. Theresa was resigned to having no computer at all, but willing to rely on those provided in the computer labs. The night before she left, her friend's mom had given her an old Tandy. It wouldn't do everything Theresa needed, but it was a welcome start, and the freshman was grateful.
Theresa shares one of the two small bedrooms with Marya, who complains she's feeling manic-depressive. ``That's okay,'' Theresa said, ``I'm Miss Happy, Smiling Person.''
Next to her bed is a window seat, a spot for her oldest and newest teddy bears - the one she got when she was six months old and the one her dad had insisted on buying the day before. It holds a Harvard pennant.
The large casement window in her room looks out onto one end of The Yard. Trees partly obscure the view of the Science Center just beyond the wall. She was pleased at its convenience; it's a place where she will spend many hours.
"I've always loved science," she said. "Things are always growing and changing. There is always something to find out, to discover."
|n n| Theresa walked out into the sunlit Yard after spending her first night in Holworthy.
``There's nothing remotely like this in Roanoke,'' she said. ``Everything is so different - like here,'' she said, stopping at a small stone plaza with a fountain.
The plaza was a gift from the class of 1878.
Breakfast was served in the freshman dining hall - in a 150-year-old building with 20-foot tin-plated ceilings, solid wood walls, a large brick hearth where you can almost see the cook-pot dangling.
Long, gleaming oak tables stood before cane-backed wooden chairs. It was a room in which Cheerios seemed an absurdity.
``I can't believe we eat here,'' Theresa said, gazing around wide-eyed. ``Anyone with the urge to drink milk out of the bowl - no way are they going to do that in here.''
There was a tenseness when Theresa's parents joined her later. They knew their remaining hours with her in Boston could be counted on one hand.
``This is where she belongs,'' her dad admitted. ``I knew it as soon as we walked in here. She's home now.''
The group headed for a store to shop for the people back home. They chose Harvard T-shirts from the racks and stacks of every imaginable Harvard memento.
|n n| Theresa and her parents stood in her room, not knowing how to begin the ending. As though pre-arranged, no roommates were present. For thousands of parents each fall, it is the moment they've dreamed of and dreaded.
``I love you, Daddy,'' Theresa said, as her father's arms encircled her.
He slowly released her and closed the door behind him without looking back.
Theresa matched her mother tear for tear from across the room. Penny hugged her daughter as if she were the last lifejacket on a sinking ship. The next time they would hold each other would be three long months away. There would be an empty chair at Thanksgiving.
Mom quickly closed the door and left her daughter alone amid the trappings of the next phase of her life and mementos of the one just closing: computers and photos of friends in prom dresses and caps and gowns, student handbooks and an Animaniacs lunchbox, a copy of "Winnie the Pooh" and a collection of Stephen King. The young woman looked bewildered, as if noticing where she was for the first time.
|n n| Emerging late from a meeting on campus jobs, Theresa scurried across Harvard Yard and arrived at Sever Hall just as the clerks were gathering up their papers.
``Go over to Robinson Hall to take your ID photo,'' the registration officer directed, ``out this door, right and to the left.''
Theresa hurried over to the turreted building. Inside, marble floors and columns contrasted with the photographer's lights and white reflector umbrellas. Being so close to the deadline, Theresa avoided the customary long lines. Usually laid-back, this time she was anxious. These were her first official acts as a Harvard student; she didn't want to mess up.
The student loan office was the next necessary stop.
``Here's one more," a clerk said. "Just under the wire. Sign here.''
She had made it. Theresa Robertson was officially part of the Harvard class of '99.
|n n| She stood in front of Widener Library, a massive rectangle of stone at one end of the Yard, the largest building on campus and part of the largest university library system in the world, with 4.5 million volumes on more than five miles of bookshelves.
Theresa climbed the more than 30 steps, only to find more to climb inside the large, marble foyer.
``They counter for the fact that we're not in the mountains here by making all these steps,'' she said, breathing hard.
Halfway up the next set of marble steps, Theresa paused to gaze at the massive windows, the marble arches, the hand-painted murals, the glass-domed ceiling. She said she felt as if she were in a cathedral.
On the other side of two enormous leather, studded doors, students sat at long wooden tables, surrounded by shelves of books between 15-foot-high arched windows. The vaulted ceiling was so high it was like being outdoors.
``I'm thinking this is not just a library,'' Theresa said slowly. ``I don't know if I can study here. It's too big.''
|n n| ``From Whoppers to Widener.'' That's how Penny Robertson described her daughter's probable job at Widener Library.
Theresa worked her first-ever job at Burger King last summer. Savings from the minimum-wage job will be used for living expenses during her almost 10 months at Harvard. She plans to spread her money equally over each month, listing every penny she spends, firmly cutting costs or eliminating expenses to stay within her budget.
``She always thinks hard before she spends a dollar,'' Penny said.
Theresa is on the work-study program, limited to 10 hours a week for freshmen. She will save the money she earns and add more from next summer's job to buy a better computer than the one she arrived with.
And there'll be next year's living expenses, too.
|n n| ``Did you invert the ... put the cosign ... was the tangent to ...'' Theresa and her roommates sputtered at each other after the calculus placement test.
``I would hate to have to take a whole year of that again,'' she said, ``but I haven't had a lot of it since my junior year at Governor's School.''
She did well and was exempted from the first semester.
``There's nothing in the chemistry lab manual I haven't already had,'' she said. She scored high enough on the calculus placement test to be exempted from the first semester.
``Latin terrifies me, though,'' she said. (She had visited the class during a ``shopping'' period when students sit in on potential courses.) ``The teacher rattled on and on and I thought, doesn't he realize this is the first day of first year?''
``I might finally have to tell my mom it's hard now.''
|n n| Back home, Theresa's dad had to move the old mint-green pickup truck he had given Theresa. Her mom cried every time she saw it through the window.
``I wanted her to be in it,'' she said.
A ``for sale'' sign rests inside the windshield.
The truck is more than Callie, who is just learning to drive, can handle.
Callie is emerging from Theresa's long shadow. An excellent student at Fleming, she has been accepted into ``Who's Who in American High Schools.''
``She's got her heart set on Vanderbilt," Penny said. "Then, what am I going to do?''
|n n| ``Mom called and said she had a hard time at the supermarket,'' Theresa reported. A lover of kosher dill pickles, Theresa often asked Penny to buy her a jar. Sometimes she did; other times, they were too expensive.
``She told me when she got to the pickle aisle, she lost it,'' Theresa said. ``She said people were looking at her, but she couldn't stop sobbing.''
Theresa's been too busy to think about being homesick. Besides, she is at home now.
``I keep asking her, trying to find something that's wrong, but everything is right,'' Penny said.
``I think she's really gone.''
by CNB