For Dr. Marie Fowler, as Howard University’s most generationally senior student, she said earning her doctorate degree in divinity was a calling from God.
“It was never my thought that I would go beyond maybe one semester because, after all, I started school when I had been out of school since 1959,” Dr. Fowler said. “I didn’t even know if I could even retain information.”
After initially doubting her ability and finances in this stage of her life, Dr. Fowler says it was her parents’ experiences and her father’s words still ringing in her ear that pushed her forward.
“My mom and dad were born in an era when it was illegal for them to learn to read and write,” Dr. Fowler said. “We taught my dad how to read and write and how to sign his name.”
Throughout her three years at Howard’s divinity school, Dr. Fowler made her mark.
“She was the life of the party,” Alice Ogden Bellis, a professor of the Hebrew Bible at the school said. “She knew what she needed, what she wanted, and she came here, and she did that.”
“The other thing I wanna say is that it is never too late,” Dr. Fowler said. “I want everyone to realize that.”