The finish line often seemed a long way away for Shaquille Jones.
A formerly homeless Chicago teen, Jones came to St. Ambrose in 2013 to run for the Fighting Bees track and field squad and, more importantly, get the college education his late grandmother constantly told him was his ticket out of poverty.
Jones crossed that finish line at Winter Commencement ceremonies on Dec. 16 at the RiverCenter in Davenport. He said not finishing simply was not an option — particularly not with a virtual village of Ambrosians urging him onward in place of Gloria Jones, the grandmother who raised him for most of his youth before she died of cancer in 2010.
"This semester has been the hardest," Jones said. "I have been taking 21 credit hours while working an internship. At one point, I was working three jobs and taking all these classes, and it was hard. I knew it was going to be worth it, so I was like, 'All right, Shaq. You either go big or you go home.'''
Jones couldn't help but stop and appreciate the irony in the last sentence. Following his grandmother's death, he spent more than two years staying in various places, working while going to school, and uncertain when he would have a place he could truly call home again.
Ultimately, he found a home, thanks to his grandmother's insistence years earlier that he apply to the Links Unlimited Scholars Foundation for mentorship and tuition to a private Catholic high school. Foundation mentors Kai Bandele and Bernette Braden took him in when they learned he was homeless, and Jones earned a high school diploma at Seton Academy in South Holland, Ill.
College prep courses at Seton readied Jones for St. Ambrose. Scholarships, financial aid, and year-round work-study positions here eased his financial burden. But Jones said he could not have arrived on the cusp of graduation without the academic and emotional support of Track and Field Head Coach Dan Tomlin, Director of Student Concerns Merredyth McManus, dozens of professors, and the entire SAU community.
"Coach Tomlin and Merredyth were like my mom and dad in a way, because Tomlin was going to tell me everything I didn't want to hear but needed to hear," he said. "Merredyth was that way, too, but with more of a sweet side."
The support of teammates like best friend Michael Ohioze '17 helped as well, and Jones found yet another avid supporter in Michael's mother, Sandra. She covered a tuition shortfall in Jones' sophomore year when the $1,000 he had saved from a summer job wasn't quite enough.
In the past year alone, Mary Ohland, retiring student employment coordinator at the Career Center, ripped up his resume and helped Jones rebuild it. Joe Kehoe, director of the SAU Sales Center, showed Jones how to carry himself like a professional and helped him find an internship that has become a full-time management trainee position with a Bettendorf, Iowa, marketing firm.
"Dealing with me these past four-and-a-half years took a lot of dedication and work on a lot of people's part," Jones said. "They busted their butts, stuck their necks out, and their word was on the line. And all they asked was that I make it through. That was it. So I had to make sure that I did."
Tomlin said Jones should save some credit for himself.
"When you meet Shaq, he makes you want to move heaven and earth to help him," the coach said. "I'm very proud of everything Shaq has done and of the person he is today. He's a self-made man, and he's going to do great things once he leaves SAU."
High school mentors Bandale and Braden were there to watch him graduate, and, there in the young man's heart was the grandmother who sat him down at the kitchen table even before he'd started kindergarten to learn to read, write, and do math.
"We didn't have much, but she told me education would get me where I had to go," he said. " I didn't always believe it, but I stuck with it."
Jones has not forgotten how it felt to be uncertain where he might sleep on a given night — who could? — and, so, he is eager to pay his blessings forward in the future as a Links Unlimited mentor and/or sponsor.
"I'm a product of the people who didn't give up on me, even when it may have seemed like I wasn't going to pull through," he said. "I don't know where I'd be without them. You never know the impact you can have on someone's life."
Jones also understands the impact a collegiate experience, a St. Ambrose experience, has had and likely will have for him and his fellow Saturday grads. As such, he feels an obligation to show young people in dire circumstances such as those he experienced that his grandma's trust in the value of an education was valid.
"I can't wait to tell kids like me that four years can change your life," he said. "You're not going to be the same. No matter where you came from, no matter your background, four years can change your life."
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