Mom earns degree 32 years later, graduates with 3 of her children

COPPERAS COVE, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - A Texas mother says she is finishing what she started by graduating college after first taking classes more than three decades ago.

Michelle Dery, 50, will not only graduate this week from Central Texas College but she’ll be doing so with her children.

Dery will be crossing the stage Friday alongside her 28-year-old daughter, Jessica Dery, her 27-year-old son, Victor Dery, and her 23-year-old son, Joshua Dery.

“Last semester, we were all talking about how many classes we had left to go,” Michelle Dery said. “And we were like, ‘Oh, my gosh. We’re all going to end together!’”

It’s been a long road for the married mother of five whose husband and father to the kids is a disabled veteran.

Michelle Dery started college just after her 1992 graduation from Lampasas High School, but her husband traveled a lot for work and life got busy when she became a mom.

“I started in 1992, did a semester, and then did another semester around 2001, but I have been busy raising a family and just never got the chance to finish,” she said.

While at her youngest child’s elementary school, she was asked by her daughter why she never graduated.

Michelle Dery said it was then, about a year and a half ago, that she began looking at returning to school.

“I went back to school because my little one said, ‘Don’t you always say finish what you started?’’ she said.

The mother of five said her son Victor Dery even got more serious about school when he found out that she was on track to graduate before him.

“Victor was like, ‘You’re not graduating before me,’ So, he stepped it up,” Michelle Dery said.

The mother did have a few classes with her children along the way too.

“I tried to ignore them and sit on the other side of the room, but they’d always be like, ‘That’s my mom!’” she said.

Michelle, Victor and Joshua Dery will graduate with an Associate of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. Jessica Dery will earn her degree in nursing.

“I’m really proud to be able to sit across the stage at the same time with them,” Michelle Dery said. “I am proud to see them do it, and it feels like a journey that’s completed.”