Hazel Robinson

A Second Chance to Shine - The Before and After Lives of Mount Holyoke's Older Learners
Vista, Summer 1997, by Emily Harrison Weir

Hazel Robinson raised two children mostly on her own, handled a formerly drug-addicted husband, moved her family out of a dangerous inner-city neighborhood, and even commuted more than two hours each way to a job while always pursuing a college degree. Finally, she's going to get one.Hazel Robinson

Hazel Robinson just wanted to change her hairstyle, but one trip to a hairdresser in Amherst brought her a new lifestyle as well. A chance meeting with associate dean of studies Ruth Bass Green at the hairdresser led Robinson, who is forty-seven, to stop thinking of Mount Holyoke only as a place her daughter might attend and start thinking of it as a place she could finish her degree. "I'd driven by the campus many times, but always thought of it as Harvard: totally out of my reach even though I was a good student," Robinson recalls. But Green planted the seed of an idea, and soon Robinson was thinking, "I survived all these other things, why can't I go to this school?"

Green's encouragement to apply helped boost Robinson over the last of many hurdles between her and a diploma. At eighteen, she was too busy helping her mother raise her siblings to considercollege. She took several courses over the next twenty-seven years, although rearing two kids in a dangerous inner city Boston neighborhood, coping with a drug-addicted husband, and supporting the family didn't leave much time for study.
... And what about Hazel Robinson, who learned about MHC at the hairdresser? She's living in Amherst with her husband (who's kicked drugs and helps others do the same) and two children, and majoring in sociology. The Robinsons are laying the groundwork for Northampton's first residential substance abuse treatment program for women. As Robinson's and other FPs' lives make clear, every woman is a universe of possibilities, and the FP program helps their stars shine brightly.

The circumstances leading women to the FP program are individual, but the reason is the same: every woman knows when it's her turn to shine.