Marion Gibson ’24
PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas – Marion Gibson wears the title of a first-generation college graduate with honors. Her childhood years growing up in poverty in Houston were her motivation to go to college and break the generational curse.
“I was determined to put some respect on my family’s legacy,” she said. In adversity and triumph, Marion knew she was destined for a better life that would bring her childhood vision to fruition.
Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown
Marion’s journey at Prairie View A&M University started over 18 years ago, but her studies were cut short after discovering she was pregnant with her first daughter. As it became challenging to maintain her studies, Marion was placed on academic probation and eventually dropped out.
A few years after the birth of her daughter, Marion’s mother, Yelisa Taylor, sadly passed away. “I’m the baby girl of my family, and to lose a mother at 25, you don’t know where to turn to.” At her bedside, she promised her mother that she would return to school. Others close to Marion would also pass in the following years, including her grandmother, Mrs. Katherine Jordan.
After losing her mother and grandmother, Marion has always tried to be a mother to the motherless. So when her niece’s lives were cut short (Miracle Beavers and Bri’Jean Swain, who were only 19 and 17), Marion was devastated.
Taking each loss in stride, the weight of her grief was almost unbearable at times. However, Marion kept striving.
She enrolled in the associate’s program at Houston Community College. Throughout her studies, Marion not only had to balance her duties as a mother but was also rehabbing from surgery. To date, she’s had five spinal and three knee surgeries that left her learning how to walk again. With 17 full pins and four half pins in her tibia, Marion earned her associate’s degree in arts in 2020 and transferred to PVAMU to finish what she started.
From Academic Probation to the Dean’s List
When Marion enrolled in PVAMU for the second time, she didn’t let being a nontraditional student and her duties as a single mother of three stop her from making the most of her PVAMU experience. “I had a blast,” she recalls with a sense of love and nostalgia.
Marion received her Black Coat from the College of Business, made the Dean’s List from 2021-2024, was inducted into the National Honors Society and the National Society of Leadership and Success and received numerous academic scholarships.
She welcomed the additional responsibility and recognition as motivation to do more and raise her standards even higher. “I shared these achievements with many great leaders, which inspired me to be greater. I wanted to reach higher and higher, and sharing this path with so many of my peers made it even sweeter.”
During the highs and lows of her tenure at PVAMU, the family and the sense of home Marion felt on campus never left. “The home away from home feeling is the greatest part to me. When I leave, I want to come back.”
Play Hard, but Work Harder: Embracing Motherhood on the Path to Higher Education
Marion’s daughters, Dream, age 19, a student at Texas Southern University; Destiny, age 16, and Dynastee, age 13, are physical reminders of her promise to her family and childhood self.
There isn’t one way to success, but Marion feels blessed to provide her daughters with the blueprint she wished she had. “I had my girls and my sister’s children as well. They looked up to me. I was their big sister. This road was not easy, but I worked hard and showed them that hard work does pay off.”
Navigating her studies as a mom posed unique challenges, but it’s made Marion’s accomplishment as a PVAMU graduate much more rewarding. “They are the best gift God could have bestowed upon me. I always say God gave me a Dream that led me to my Destiny; now I have my Dynastee in the three.”
Marion looks forward to seeing her daughters and others in her support circle in the audience during graduation. Her mother, grandmother and niece’s absence will be missed, but their presence will still be felt.
She says she’s not only crossing the stage for herself; she is crossing the stage for them. Every step Marion takes will be a witness to her why, her children, those who raised her and the staff who motivated and fought alongside her through to the finish line. “Thanks to all the professors who did not let me quit; you know who you are.”
Graceful Endings and New Beginnings
Completing her degree is the first entry in Marion’s next chapter. Thanks to the help of Dr. Daniel Kennebrew, during a recent spring career fair, Marion learned about an opportunity that could help jumpstart her career. She’s secured an internship with Enterprise Holdings at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in the company’s manager trainee program. “This experience has made me respect the management field even more than before by being a part of a growing and innovative team. It has also made me know that my classes are essential and my overall goal in management feels closer than ever before.”
Marion hopes the internship will lead to a full-time position where she can prove she will be a great asset to the company.
While it would be easy to boast that she achieved her goals on her own, she sees it as a communal, even ancestral effort—a manifestation of the prayers, hopes and tears cried by the women who raised her. She acknowledges her hard work, but she believes the wisdom and knowledge that they passed on have been the key.
Besides earning a bachelor’s degree in business management, Marion is proud to be in a position that will further her family’s lineage of phenomenal women.
“I can only humbly say look what GOD has done for me. Because I believed, I achieved.”
Click here to view more of this semester’s notable graduates.
By Whitney Stovall
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