Wesley Ramsey IV is over six-foot-four with a bleached Afro that adds six or seven inches, so finding him among the masses of other graduates at Howard University’s commencement ceremony wasn’t challenging. His many ticket-holding supporters (a fan club consisting of his father, sisters, aunt, uncle, cousins and girlfriend) were seated at a distance.
But his mother was just rows away — prime seating to watch her son attain his bachelor’s degree just minutes before she became a Howard alumna herself.
As the Rev. Carla Ramsey beamed through her and her eldest child’s shared commencement, she considered their long, intertwined journey to the Yard, Howard’s main quad, on the Saturday before Mother’s Day.
She was in her senior year of high school in Queens when she first visited — and fell in love with — Howard. But her mother and father, an entrepreneur, didn’t have the funds. One wedding, three children and several decades later, she returned to the campus in the nation’s capital: Wesley’s collegiate prospects for his finance degree were down to two schools.
“I’m in Howard’s bookstore and I am holding all Howard’s gear and I was saying, ‘So what’s it going to be?’” she said. “Because I clearly wanted him to come here. I thought he was going to be living my dream.”
He looked at her and said the word. “Howard.”
“The tears came to my eyes and I thought that that was it,” she said from the campus’s football stadium hours before her graduation. From where she sat, she could see the outside of the window she remembered peering through while moving Wesley into his freshman dormitory.
Carla, 56, greets with a hug and talks like a preacher — every upswing a blessing, every downturn a lesson. All divinely, purposefully planned. She talks with her hands like she was born at a pulpit. She delivered her first benediction at 16 years old on Easter Sunday.
Most recently, the director of external affairs for an energy company, she already had three degrees when she was admitted into a PhD program in ministry. But she “didn’t want to go and didn’t understand why,” she said. She prayed on it, researched and learned that Howard’s Doctorate in Ministry program had recently become available online. She applied and was accepted.
“Somehow time had collapsed, even though it’s been all these years,” Carla said. “It didn’t even matter that I was my age, grown with a husband and kids. I felt once again like a young college person starting on college campus.”
The universe felt additionally aligned when she learned that her program was moving to a two-year timeline, so she could graduate this spring instead of in 2027. Meanwhile, Wesley had a handful of remaining credits that prevented him from graduating with the rest of his class in 2025. The changes meant they could celebrate in their regalia, together.
“Sometimes your dreams are deferred until God gets you ready and God gets the place ready,” she said, voice shaking and tears swelling. “You have to be patient with that.”
On Saturday, they were both part of a 3,160-person graduating class, among the largest in the historically Black university’s history, whose ages ranged from 19 to 71. Nearly three-quarters were women, and almost half were Pell Grant recipients, according to a university news release marking Howard’s 158th commencement.
At half past 8 a.m., both Ramseys walked with their respective schools from the football field to the main ceremony, Carla holding high the School of Divinity’s banner. The choir sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) delivered a commencement address about the lessons she learned during her time in office. (She was interrupted by boos and chants.)
After each school’s degrees were conferred, students and faculty linked arms and swayed to Howard’s alma mater, written in 1916.
“Make us true and leal and strong / Ever bold to battle wrong,” echoed thousands of voices in unison across the field.
For Carla, it wasn’t always easy to parent three children, the youngest of whom is still in high school, while pursuing her divinity degree. She leaned on her husband and her community; Carla, who spent much of the last year with his family in Queens, was home to help. Her north star was graduating alongside her son.
“Every decision I made, I made with the goal in mind of ‘You’re walking in May, so you gotta make sacrifices,’” she said. “You can’t go to that event, you’ve got papers due. Everything was so that I dotted all I’s and crossed all T’s. And it wasn’t easy.”
Wesley, 22, had his own challenges. Despite a love of finance and a knack for numbers that had him buying $20 Nike stocks as an early teen, he started his freshman year as a marketing major. He took the wrong classes; he got distracted. So as a sophomore, he switched his major to finance and watched his grades skyrocket. He took 15, then 17, then 18, then 21-credit semesters. He won a schoolwide stock competition.
His mom was always encouraging. And he supported her right back. As he watched her cross the stage in her regalia, he was struck by her fortitude.
“I was super proud to be a part of that moment, and to understand that my mom, after all these years, came back to school and excelled,” Wesley said. “And now she gets to look her son in the eye and I get to look my mom in the eye while I’m watching her get celebrated.”
He plans to stay at home in Queens for now — that’s where they keep their shared Howard merch — as he pursues his finance certifications and teaches youth financial literacy courses in underserved communities.
Meanwhile, his mom will continue her work on her doctoral project, which aims to open educational opportunities for those aging out of the foster care system. She calls it the FIT Bridge model, for Faith In Trust in God. On Saturday, she wore a Howard ring inscribed with a phrase, also her moniker: FIT REV.
The work is personal. Twenty-six years ago, Carla learned she was adopted and was never supposed to know. She was briefly in the foster care system before her parents took her home as a baby.
“[The project] is my next step, using the church and the values that the church gives to individuals, the integrity, the morals, to help the formation of these young individuals to know that they too have been chosen,” she said.
Watching her son step across the stage, she thought of her own mother, who died the April just before Carla earned her undergraduate degree.
“My mother wasn’t here to see my son graduate, and then God has blessed me to see my son graduate,” she said. “I was really emotional about that, and emotional to see this beautiful young man that my husband and I made graduate from Howard.”
The post A mother and son’s long journey to graduate from Howard University, together appeared first on Washington Post.
