{"id":2106,"date":"2020-11-19T09:40:28","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T14:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/history\/?p=2106"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:14:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T15:14:02","slug":"history-major-pat-ormond-earns-ba-alongside-granddaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/history\/2020\/11\/19\/history-major-pat-ormond-earns-ba-alongside-granddaughter\/","title":{"rendered":"History Major Pat Ormond Earns BA Alongside Granddaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Congratulations to History major Pat Ormond, who graduates from UTC alongside her granddaughter!<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n

This story, authored by Shawn Ryan, originally appeared as a UTC News Release<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pat Ormond thought it was a silly idea to go back to college when she was in her 70s.<\/span><\/p>\n

She had spent most of her adult life working in accounting while raising her kids and her grandkids. She was retired. It was time to take it easy. What good would going back to college do? Why would she want to do it in the first place?<\/span><\/p>\n

But her family wouldn\u2019t let up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little difficult, sort of a resistance to change and just the generally typical idea that, \u2018I don\u2019t want to go to college. I\u2019m too old for college,\u2019\u201d recalled her granddaughter Melody Ormond. \u201cAnd I was, \u2018That\u2019s a lie. Of all the women in our family, you inspire us to know that we can do anything at any age.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even at 22, her granddaughter \u201chas always been able to make her puppy eyes at me,\u201d Pat admitted. \u201cAnd I was becoming a pain. I can admit it now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pat Ormond and granddaughter Melody Ormond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The puppy eyes worked so well that, 42 years after she took her first college class, Pat is graduating Friday with a bachelor\u2019s degree in anthropology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She will be 75 in mid-December. On the same day, Melody is graduating from UTC with a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology. They will receive their degrees during the same commencement ceremony at 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 20, on Chamberlain Field.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI always brag since she started going to school with me. I\u2019ve told people, like every class, all my friends, \u2018Oh, Nana, she goes to school, my Nana, my Nana, did you hear that?,\u2019 Melody said. \u201cAnd everybody\u2019s always like, \u2018Oh wow, that\u2019s so cool.\u2019 She knocked it out of the park.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pat\u2019s daughter, Darla Ormond, also graduated from UTC in 1994 with a degree in special education, making it three generations of female Ormonds who earned degrees from the University. Darla now teaches in Lawrenceville, Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n

To describe Pat and Melody as Type A personalities is something of an understatement. Pat is a low-key force of nature, steady and steely. She\u2019s obviously proud when she talks about what she\u2019s done across her entire life, which includes marriage, kids, having a full-time career and going to school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Melody is a more vigorous brand of energy\u2014outgoing, confident and talkative about what\u2019s she\u2019s done, what she \u00a0hopes to do and what she\u2019s doing now. The doing-now list includes jobs she\u2019s had while in school\u2014The Bridge at Ooltewah senior living community, Amazon and now a server at Applebee\u2019s at Northgate Mall.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe was working every semester. School was my work. So I\u2019m very proud of her for what she\u2019s done,\u201d Pat said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Graduating together was always the plan when they enrolled at UTC in 2017. To graduate at the same time, though, Pat sometimes had to take five courses per semester, plus labs. Despite the massive load, she ended with a 3.79 grade point average and is a member of the Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society. Melody has a very respectable 3.4 GPA.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1963, Pat enrolled in Marietta\/Cobb Vocational Technical School in Atlanta and took several computer classes over the next few years. Computers were in their infancy at the time and, with what she learned, she was able to step into the industry on the ground floor. She turned her knowledge into a career helping accounting and CPA firms in Atlanta and Chattanooga set up their computer systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on just about every kind of system there is and implemented the systems,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1978, she took the Accounting 1 course at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, which she considers her first true college courses since Marietta\/Cobb was a vocational school. She left after one semester and moved to Chattanooga, where she worked at local accounting firms. In the 1980s and \u201990s, she took a few courses here and there at UTC but never finished her degree. Raising kids and working 40- to 60-hour-a-week jobs threw up roadblocks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe money for the classes had to be used for classes only after living expenses and the childrens\u2019 expenses were taken care of. This meant there was very little left for my education,\u201d she explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

After retiring, though, she was becoming something of a homebody, not a familiar or comfortable place for her. Living in a home with her son, grandson and granddaughters\u00a0 wasn\u2019t optimal, either, she added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all actually grumpy teenagers around that time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So after all the coaxing and needling and badgering, school finally seemed like a good idea, despite wondering whether she could tote the load, especially with the three-year graduation plan. She chose anthropology because she\u2019s \u201calways loved archeology and that was my prime anthropology push.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Having grown up on a farm in North Georgia, she was given a sense of purpose and drive by her parents, Pat said. Her father told her she could do whatever she wanted in life, \u201cand that was kind of odd for a man born in 1910.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always been told to stand up for your rights,\u201d she explained. \u201cLive a legal life, you know. Obey the law, but don\u2019t let anyone push you around, whether you are male or female. And I was taught to do a little bit of everything. I can sew. I can thread a pipe. I can lay bricks. I can milk a cow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Melody, after graduating from Red Bank High School, spent her freshman year at Berea College in Kentucky, but it wasn\u2019t a comfortable fit, so she came back home and enrolled in UTC as a sophomore. Just another connection between her and Pat, who also enrolled at UTC as a sophomore. Melody started as a philosophy major but, like Berea, that didn\u2019t fit, either. Psychology caught her attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved people and working with people and stuff, but I just didn\u2019t really discover psychology until I took Introductory Psych, and then I just knew that was what I wanted to do. It\u2019s my only passion,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Melody isn\u2019t sure what she\u2019ll do with her degree, but she\u2019s leaning toward counseling veterans suffering from PTSD because she has a friend who is. Pat is in the same, semi-directionless position as far as her future, but she\u2019s very good at research, having conducted it for professors at UTC and elsewhere. Maybe that\u2019s her direction, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever path her life takes, Melody said, her grandmother will be her inspiration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s inspired me to sort of take my time. I have my whole life ahead of me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not inspiring me to be lazy, but just to enjoy my life because I know that I have a life to live. I don\u2019t have to do it all now. Nana has seen and experienced a lot of things, and I would like to be able to say that when I\u2019m older.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For now, though, holding degrees in hand is enough for both of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

As they walk in their upcoming commencement, both will be wearing mortarboards decorated by Melody. Hers says, \u201cMy cats got me to graduation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her grandmother\u2019s says: \u201cAfter 42 years \u2026 I\u2019m at graduation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to History major Pat Ormond, who graduates from UTC alongside her granddaughter!<\/p>\n

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