Every Saint Has a Story: Rebecca Williams '29

Amanda Williams strolled through campus on Freshman Move-In Day, blending in with all of the first-year Saints. Her mom, Rebecca, was at her side, blending in with all of the other anxious parents. The only difference...

"I brought Amanda to orientation as my emotional support daughter. She looks like the other students."

...at 52, Rebecca Williams '29 is going back to school to get her bachelor's in nursing.

In 1992, Rebecca planned to enroll in the nursing program at SUNY Morrisville. Her mom was a nurse, and Rebecca can remember flipping through her mom's nursing books as a kid. It's all she ever wanted - to be a nurse just like her mom. But instead, she sacrificed that dream for her mom.

"My brother passed away from HIV a month before I graduated high school. I had just turned 18, and I can still remember that exact moment. I decided I needed to be there for my mom. She thought I would be a doctor. She felt guilty and didn't want me to stay. But I just couldn't go."

So she stayed. She met a guy. She got married, and she had four children in four years. As she put it, "my life veered off course." After a while, she course corrected.

Rebecca wasn't the only person shattered when her brother, Bill, passed away from HIV/AIDS. Bill had a best friend, Bruce, who was living in Washington, D.C. and working on nuclear submarines. For a while, he was the uncle to Rebecca's children who Bill never had the chance to be. And then, when Rebecca left her husband for the safety of her children, it was Bruce who reached out.

"We would talk and he said, 'I can't take hearing you like this. Come live with me."

Rebecca, who by now was working as an LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse), moved south with her four children. They bought a house in Silver Springs, MD, and her relationship with Bruce blossomed into something more. They had two little girls together, and Rebecca fondly remembers those 10 years together as the best years of her life.

One night at the dinner table, Bruce had trouble swallowing. He made a doctor's appointment, and on the way home, he stopped by his attorney's office. Before he broke the news to Rebecca, he wanted to make sure his affairs were in order.

"He was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer. Two weeks after his diagnosis, my mom died. Bruce died three months later. Taking care of him while he died was the greatest honor of my life."

Rebecca was alone in Maryland with six kids, and her dad was alone and in need of care back in New York. So, Rebecca sold the house, and with six kids, two dogs, and two cats, relocated back home. Fours years later, her dad died of lung cancer.

Rebecca is now an LPN supervisor at an assisted living facility in Johnstown. She has a 10- year-old and a 15-year-old in the house, and has already put the older kids through college (including Amanda, her emotional support daughter who is a college graduate but passed for a Saint. And maybe she'll be a Saint - she's interested in joining her mom on campus as a graduate student). And right now, for a reason Rebecca struggles to explain, she's worried...

"...That I'm doing enough. I want to do outreach in areas where people have a hard time getting the medical care they need."

Rebecca has been an LPN for 33 years, and now she believes it's time to follow through on her childhood dream. She enrolled at Siena because it felt like the right environment, and she's looking forward to graduating from college the same year her second youngest graduates from high school. She's already become a role model to her classmates (more than three decades as a LPN puts her ahead of the curve), and more than anything - she wants to make two people proud.

"Bruce was a light. And I've got to do something positive for his memory. And my mom always wanted this for me. She was 'The Nurse.' I want to do this for her, too."

She's a full-time student; a full-time mom; a full-time supervisor, working up to 35 hours a week; and her commute to and from campus is nearly an hour. But as she confirmed while walking through campus, blending in with the other parents...

"I think Siena is where I belong."