As high schools and college students celebrate their graduations, I reflect back on my parents’ insistence that their children, unlike themselves, graduate from college.

My husband Bill and I always regretted that we did not have a college degree, but times were different in the 1930s during The Great Depression.

 When I graduated high school in 1935, there was no way that I could afford to go to college. Immediately after I finished school, I got a job as a bookkeeper. Most of my salary went to pay the rent of my parents’ apartment. 

Bill’s grandmother promised him that she would pay Bill’s tuition at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Those plans were crushed when his grandmother died after attending his high school graduation, and she left no provisions to pay for his education. Since he did not have the advantage of a college degree, he went into the retail business and spent many years associated with Pearls Department Store a family owned business in Keeseville, New York, that sold lower end merchandise. Things changed in the late 1960s when the Northway and the big box department stores in Plattsburgh opened. We found it difficult to compete. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to open the Village Bazaar, a very nice ladies’ store that catered to career women. It was successful, and we decided to close Pearl’s and concentrate on the Bazaar.  

While our children were growing up, we kept telling them, “You are going to college! You are going to college!” Beginning in 1964, our dreams of making sure our four children had college degrees became a reality. Our daughter Laura graduated from State University of New York at Geneseo with a degree in special education, a field in education that had just recently been created. Soon, our other children followed our oldest daughter’s footsteps. Our son Jay graduated Union College in 1968, Marilyn graduated from the University of  Albany in 1972, and our youngest Bobbie graduated from State University of New York at  Plattsburgh  in 1977. Two of the children completed masters degrees. Six of our  of our eight grandchildren have also received their undergraduate degrees and even completed advanced degrees. [Update: The seventh grandchild completed an undergraduate degree in 2015 (and is enrolled in a graduate program), and the eighth is currently attending undergraduate college full-time.]

At times, however, their education almost backfired on us. When Laura came home for Thanksgiving her first year, she began swearing up a storm, using four letter words that had never come into my home before. I decided to turn the tables on her and started using them myself. When Laura expressed surprise that I was swearing, I responded, “I’m paying $2000 a year to send you to college so that you can come home and swear like a sailor. I figured I could do it for free!” Laura never cursed in my presence again.

Jay also got a lesson in humility after his freshman year. He came home for the summer after he took, along with his other courses, a three-credit business class. He began criticizing the way Bill and I ran our businesses. He peppered us with questions. “Do you really know how to run a store? Do you understand what it takes to determine what to buy? What styles to order? How to deal with the bank?” I answered, ‘Sonny-Boy, your father and I have been running a business since before you were even born. We hired a buying office from New York City to inform us of the latest fashions. We learned that in Keeseville we sell more size 14 and 16’s. We learned that we needed to buy three pair of pants and five blouses to every blazer. We learned how to best deal with our customers. We learned this by the seat of our pants, which is better than any business course they teach at your fancy school.” 

There is an old saying that states:  I was amazed at how little my parents knew when I was 17 and how much they learned by the time I was 21.” Our son Jay learned that lesson that day.

Bill and I take pride in our children and grandchildren’s education, but we also take pride in the fact that we were self-taught, sometimes the best kind of education a person can have!

A version of this article originally appeared in the August 18, 2016, Jewish World News, a bi-weekly subscription-based newspaper in upstate New York.