Almost 80
Almost 80 is a podcast that features the life of Bennye, starting from rural Texas in the 1940s, to her years of teaching music, singing in musical and opera productions, and her prolific career as a church musician.
Almost 80
Dream Deferred, Dream Fulfilled: Completing Bennye’s Educational Journey
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Host Keisha interviews her mother about her path to higher education after an unexpected pregnancy following her college acceptance. Facing that decision, she rejected abortion out of fear and first confided in a trusted figure, Miss Vera, before telling her own mother. Rather than despair, her mother responded with optimism, offering to care for the baby so her daughter could still attend college. Bennye deferred her admission by letter and was welcomed back the following year.
She opens up about the church stigma she faced, including being required to make a public apology while the father faced no such accountability. She also shares the experience of a home birth with a midwife, and the meaningful support she received from employers and family as she prepared to head to Bishop College.
At Bishop, she hit the ground running, navigating registration, securing loans that were later revealed to be part of a financial aid scandal, and declaring a major in vocal music with a minor in education. She sang in the college choir, developed her operatic technique, studied foreign-language repertoire, and completed her student teaching, though not without some snide supervision along the way. It was also during her college years that she met her future husband, Miles.
After graduating in 1968, the couple soon moved to Boston for Miles's graduate program at BU, and it was there in Massachusetts that she launched her teaching career.