Kerry Miller-Campbell

At MHC, Frances Perkins path perfect fit for mom of (now) 4
Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Cheryl B. Wilson, Staff Writer
Saturday, May 18, 2002 -- South Hadley

It was an act of faith, a California woman says, to bring her family from California so she could become a Frances Perkins scholar at Mount Holyoke College. Kerry Campbell, 38, a former flight attendant and mother of three (now four) children, was unsure where her life would lead in 1999. Now she plans to become a Presbyterian minister.

"Coming here, I could do anything I wanted to do," Campbell said she realized. "I didn't have to stick toteaching" - a profession she had considered. Kerry Miller-Campbell and familyA Mount Holyoke alumna who is a professor at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, Calif., where Campbell got an associate degree, urged her to investigate the programs for nontraditional students at Smith College and Mount Holyoke. "Smith had a beautiful campus, but I knew instinctively that South Hadley was the place I wanted to raise my family," Campbell recalled in an interview earlier this week.

Finding family housing was difficult in September 1999. The first house they rented was condemned when the furnace wouldn't work. They finally sublet from a professor. "I took over the house," said her husband, James Campbell. "Kerry's job was to be a full-time student."He said he was fortunate that his company, Transpay Processing, a credit card processing company, was delighted to have a representative on the East Coast. Campbell said the academic transition was hard. "It took a long time to adjust to what was expected of a Mount Holyoke College student,"she said. The first two years she took just three courses, instead of the usual four or five. This last semester she had to take six classes to make up the time.

Last year was a special challenge because she had a baby. Kylee is now 15 months old. The couple's other children are James, 12, Kaylynn,10, and Cameron, 8. "Kylee came to my classes starting when she was 2 days old," Campbell said. "She sat in her bucket and slept." Professor Julio Martinez, who taught "Differences in Learning," seemed thrilled to have a baby on whom to demonstrate his concepts. "'Do you know about swaddling?' he would ask the class. 'Oh, you don't? Let me show you' and he would pick up Kylee," Campbell said. It seemed natural for Campbell to major in religion. "Even when sowing my wild oats as a flight attendant, I always felt God was in thecenter of my life," she said. "Religion is a very good focus. When you understand the basic beliefs of a people that helps you understandwho they are." "My very favorite class was 'Women in American Religious History,' " Campbell continued. "That's when I started thinking that women are critical to a faith. Almost every religion started in America was begun by a woman, except for Mormonism."

Her hardest class was Greek, she said. "For the first time I couldn't do the work." Dr. John Body, associate dean for learning skills, discovered she has a learning disability, a difficulty with memory recall. She coped by getting up at 5 a.m. to concentrate on Greek "when the house is quiet and still." In the fall, Campbell will enter Princeton Theological Seminary. She said she will always cherish the Mount Holyoke degree she will receive
on May 26. "It was really wonderful," she said. "I still walk through the campus and think, I can't believe I'm here."