20-plus years later, couple makes kids proud with diplomas

CHESAPEAKE

Jeffrey and Lisa Keenan made sure to arrive at Oscar Smith High School early Thursday, blue gowns in their hands, butterflies in their stomachs.

They had waited more than 20 years for their diplomas. It was 4:30 p.m. - 2-1/2 more hours to go.

Her story

Lisa Keenan - her first name is Joanne, but everyone calls her Lisa - left Oscar Smith High her junior year. She was Lisa Rehl.

Her mother suffered from schizophrenia, and didn't work. Her father was an alcoholic, she said, and the family was always short on money.

One day, her father asked if she could leave school and start helping out - something which, at the time, she was happy to do.

"I wasn't doing well in school," she said. "I wasn't focused."

So she quit. Her first full-time job was at Greenbrier Mall. She took the bus there every day at 4 a.m. to clean before the mall opened.

His story

Jeffrey Keenan spent three years in eighth grade at what was then Great Bridge Junior High. He quit the next year, when he was in ninth grade. He was 17.

"I just went to the principal's office one day and said, 'that's it. I'm done,'" he said.

He wasn't hanging out with a good crowd at the time, he said, and his older brother had already dropped out. His parents "didn't really have a choice" in the matter, he said.

After he quit school, he left home to live at a friend's house in Virginia Beach. His first job was as a security guard.

Eventually he started working as a stockboy at Roses, which is where he met Lisa. She had left her job cleaning the mall, and, after a stint flipping burgers, moved on to Roses, and was a department manager at the time.

The pair married April 9, 1989, and had their first child, a daughter, May 1990. She was followed by two more, and the Keenans continued through life, making ends meet through a series of odd jobs. For a brief period, when they were young, they were on welfare, but mostly they made it work.

Still: "It was a very hard way of life," Lisa Keenan said. "It really was."

Life today

Now 41, Lisa works as a custodian at her church and cleans houses on the side. Jeffrey, 38, drives an 18-wheeler. Their oldest daughter is a student at Old Dominion University. Their son, 17, is a rising senior at Oscar Smith High, and their youngest daughter, 12, is going to be in eighth grade at Oscar Smith Middle.

The kids were on the right track. The job possibilities had plateaued. Jeffrey decided in December it was time to go back for that diploma.

At first, Lisa had no interest.

"I'm going to be happy for you," she told him. "I'm going to help you study. But I'm not going to do it."

Then she changed her mind. Three times a week, four hours a night. They'd do it together. For Jeffrey, it had been 21 years since he left school. For Lisa, it'd been 23.

What's next?

Lisa sat in the auditorium with some crumpled sheets of paper in her hand. She and her husband had been asked to say a few words to the 100 or so students who had taken their GEDs, or General Educational Development tests, and would be graduating with them that day.

The people who would walk on stage ranged from teenagers who had just recently left school, to people like the Keenans, who had had to rearrange their lives to fit this in.

They all had something in common, however, Lisa had written. For one reason or another, at some point, they'd left high school. Then they came back to finish what they had started.

The Keenans took the test together in February, just a month after they had started taking classes. Jeffrey passed. Lisa didn't. She'd fallen short on the math section by 10 points.

She didn't want to go back to the classes without Jeffrey.

"That wasn't the deal," she said. " We were doing this together."

But she felt her kids' eyes on her, watching to see if she'd give up. So she went back, took the test again in April. This time she passed.

She and Jeffrey have signed up for classes at Tidewater Community College in the fall. They want to train to be paramedics.

"In three years, we'll have a totally different life," Lisa said. "Totally different! I don't know why it took so long."

They arrived extra early on Thursday because they were nervous, but after two hours of waiting, their nerves were mostly gone. They unwrapped their gowns and put them on.

How do you put on the tassle? Jeffrey asked. So it's shake with the right, take with the left?

Every one gathers together for a group picture; then the city's GED program administrator starts calling names in alphabetical order for the students to line up.

"What is she on? H's?" Jeffrey asks. "OK, we're getting there."

Lisa applies one last coat of lipstick.

"There are four J's," Jeffrey tells her. "Then there's us."

"Jeffrey and Joanne."

They stand up and take their places, wait for the rest of the names to be called.

"Ain't that line nice and pretty?" the woman calls out. "Let's do it guys."

They march down the hall and as they approach the auditorium, "Pomp and Circumstance" starts playing.

"The kids are on the left side," Jeffrey reminds Lisa.

Then they step through the doors.

Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com