For Donna Clemons, achieving her bachelor’s degree has been a 50-year journey that began with a semester at San Francisco State University in 1975, spanned two distinct careers, one among the clouds as a flight attendant for TWA, and another in health and education at the Kings County Office of Education.
Around 2022, Clemons began seriously considering going back and completing her degree. In fall 2023, she enrolled through the Reconnect Program offered by the Division of Continuing and Global Education. The fully online program is designed for students like Clemons who started but have not completed their bachelor’s degree. The flexible program allowed Clemons to look over her transcripts with a campus expert and design a pathway for her to finish her studies.
At 10:30 a.m. Friday, May 16, at the Save Mart Center, 68-year-old Clemons of Armona, will walk the stage and accept her degree in liberal arts during the College of Arts and Humanities commencement at Fresno State.
Donna Clemons at her 50th reunion for Hanford High School.
Growing up in Hanford, the fourth grade was pivotal for Clemons. It was a time of discovery, when she found two passions that would mold her life from then on. The first was music. After a couple of years of piano lessons – two hours every Saturday – she took up the violin as it was the only available instrument in her school. Later, she learned to play the clarinet and performed with her middle school band and the marching band at Hanford High School.
Meanwhile, in the classroom, Clemons began learning about the Wright brothers and the first flight at Kitty Hawk. Growing up, Clemons lived under constant airplane traffic from the nearby Lemoore Naval Air Station. Just looking up sparked dreams of soaring above it all while being whisked off to faraway places.
“I grew up knowing two things,” Clemons said. “I was going to be a musician.. I also knew I wanted to be up in the air.”
While her passion for music would define her early education, flight would take over her young adult life. After graduating from Hanford High School in 1974, Clemons enrolled at San Francisco State University in the spring of 1975 to study music therapy with interests in theory and composition.
“What I love about music is its structure and versatility: How A-B-C-D-E-F-G, the Western scale, can create everything from Beethoven and Beyonce to Dave Brubeck,” Clemons said.
After one semester, she was forced to move back to the Valley, she said, because the financial aid was insufficient and living in the dorms was expensive. She continued her education, taking courses at West Hills College in Lemoore and College of the Sequoias in Visalia.
In 1977, Clemons moved to Alhambra, and worked at Bank of America in the loan payoff, credit rating and trust accounting departments. While she enjoyed working at the bank, she set her sights on the sky and began looking for a job with an airline.
In January 1979, Clemons got her wings and started working as a flight attendant for TWA. She found working in the airlines to be an exciting career. She loved flying, especially the takeoff and landing when the gravitational forces were at their greatest. She also enjoyed the lifestyle.
“What I loved about flying and the airline industry was the atmosphere. The incredible people who made it happen,” Clemons said. “Plus, the aircraft like 747s, L-1011 and 727s. The physiology of flight and the beauty of aircraft.”
After the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, it was a tumultuous time for the airline industry. In 1983, Clemons was laid off from TWA, and she began taking classes at California State University, Long Beach, commuting from Hanford.
“I drove my little MGB [sports car] twice a week from Hanford to Long Beach,” Clemons said. “I would leave here just in time to get into the parking lot and take classes. My classes were from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Then I would come right back to the Grapevine, get here at 1 in the morning, study, and go back on Thursdays.”
Soon, she was back in the air, hired as a flight attendant by Western Airlines. She eventually returned to TWA before retiring from the airline industry permanently in January 1991, just as TWA slipped into bankruptcy.
Back home, Clemons did an intensive 8-month program to receive her certified nursing assistant license at Hanford Adult School. That launched her second career as a health assistant at Shelly Baird School in Hanford.
With hopes of moving from the nurse’s office to the classroom, Clemons took several online courses through Fresno State in the early 2000s. These early versions of online classes were taught on the internet, but the assignments were turned in at the Fresno State Lemoore site.
After working for several years in the school nurse’s office, she transitioned into a classroom role, working with children with autism.
In 2012, Clemons retired from the Kings County Office of Education and spent the next year relaxing and enjoying retirement before becoming a substitute classified employee, primarily for Armona Elementary School, until the pandemic shutdown.
When the pandemic brought her substitute teaching to a halt, Clemons found herself at another crossroads in life — one that would ultimately lead her back to her unfinished academic journey. Through the Reconnect Program, Clemons connected with the material and her professors. She named several faculty who helped and inspired her along the way, specifically English professor Dr. Alison Mandaville who helped her get set up in the program; assistant English professor Dr. Michele McConnell who instilled a sense of excellence to her writing; and Dr. Amila Becirbegovic, associate professor of German literature and critical theory, whose “genocide, memory and media” class Clemons called “one of the most fascinating courses I have taken in my life.”
“From the start, Donna stood out in the cohort as someone who is deeply curious about the world and eager to engage in challenging issues in class and with her classmates,” Mandaville said. “She is able to deftly connect personal and local knowledge and experiences to national and global contexts. Her presence in class brings this invaluable life experience to enrich learning for all the other students. She serves as a role model of lifelong learning and intellectual persistence.”
Unlike her younger counterparts, stepping into a world of fresh possibilities, Clemons’ graduation marked a different kind of triumph. Having already navigated the skies as a flight attendant and found fulfillment in her work at the Kings County Office of Education, the traditional excitement of embarking on a career was absent.
“I’ve had two careers. Wonderful. And now I’m finishing what people usually equate as necessary for the beginning,” Clemons said.
Still, even at 68, Clemons is looking forward to the opportunities her degree will unlock, but there is no urgent need. Instead, her achievement stands as a testament to her enduring commitment to learning and personal growth, a journey she had punctuated with life’s many detours and accomplishments.
“It’s been a joy working with Donna precisely because she takes her learning very seriously, enjoying it for its own sake, not primarily for what it will ‘get’ her in terms of money or career,” Mandaville said. “She is a stellar example of how learning is a lifelong human endeavor; she is an inspiration to those who think it’s too late to continue their intellectual growth. It’s never too late.”
As Donna accepts her diploma, it’s not with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a novice, but the quiet satisfaction of someone who knows that life’s most valuable lessons have already been learned, in the classroom and beyond.
