Instead of Going to College, I Read These Books

For a woman whose life took another path, a teacher’s reading list taught her everything she needed to know

- Tom Hallman

Steph Clemence always intended to go to college. But life has a tendency to throw obstacles in the way. Growing up, she led a nomadic life because her mother, who divorced and remarried several times, was always on the move. As a result, Steph attended five different kindergarten programs. By the time she was a senior in high school, Steph had lived in 25 places.

Still, she had good grades and considered herself college-bound. But when her stepfather died tragically in a car accident, leaving her mother to support three daughters on a modest income, paying for college became out of the question.

Around that time, Steph’s boyfriend, Gary Frye, enlisted in the Navy, a four-year commitment that would send him overseas. Before he shipped out, the couple tied the knot.

“We got married on July 7, and Gary left on August 18,” says Steph. “I dropped him off at the bus station and cried all the way home.”

With her husband at sea, Steph lived with her family, found a job, and tried to figure out what to do with a life that had deviated so from the plan she’d carefully laid out.

The answer came one afternoon when she was cleaning her bedroom closet. Inside a box of files she spotted a thick folder on which she’d written “High School Keepsakes.” Tucked in among memorabilia and photos from her time at McKenzie High School in Vida, Oregon, Steph found two stapled mimeographed pages from the English teacher she'd had her junior year, Dorothy Clark.