Graduating grandma: After 3 tries, 63-year-old singer will receive her degree
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Posted By: How May I Help You NC on May 12, 2017 By Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Dillard University choir president LaVerne Robertson Davis stepped in front of her final college class on April 20 as if it were Carnegie Hall. Dressed in tailored Dillard-blue pants and a matching college T-shirt, her blonde-streaked hair in a perfect shag, Davis launched into a recitation. "Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic," she declared. She ticked her Ts and paused to build suspense, not for a moment treating the assignment like kids' stuff. Taking it seriously. Her first time in college, Davis was a kid herself, and she didn't take it seriously. That was 1970. She lasted a year. Then came marriage, children, career, divorce, remarriage, seven grandchildren and cancer twice -- as she puts it, "life." On Saturday (May 13), at the age of 63, Davis will earn her bachelor's degree in vocal performance. -- Growing up in the Milan neighborhood, Davis always had drive and focus. She set goals and worked toward them. She'd go to the YMCA and look up classes to take. It drove her middle sister Anna Robertson nuts. "I would be interested in hair and makeup, and she would be interested in typing!" Robertson said. The family owned a service station, a cab company and a day care center. The three girls worked in them all. "I always knew the value of an education," Davis said. Her mother set an example, graduating from college the year she graduated from Walter L. Cohen High and began studying business at the University of New Orleans. So Davis can't really explain why college didn't work. "Being a child of the '60s, I got sidetracked," she said. She remembered "basically hanging in the student union that first year until I dropped out and got married." Back then, you didn't need a college degree to get a good job. In 1979, when Davis' younger child was 2 years old, she began working at Tulane Law School. From there, she got an administrative job at a law firm, which turned into a 25-year career. Shortly before Hurricane Katrina, she retired from the legal industry and went to work for her church. Davis studied along the way as needed, earning a paralegal certificate. Twice she tried college again: UNO in the late '70s, Loyola for a semester or two while working full-time a decade later. In all that time, Davis was everyone else's cheerleader. Her youngest sister became a star dancer in New York. Her son graduated from Texas Southern University. Robertson, who had also dropped out, finished college and then graduate school, earning a doctorate in 2013. "If I ran for dogcatcher, LaVerne would say, 'Girl, you're going to be the best dogcatcher there is,'" Robertson said. "I never felt like there was something I could not do. Because LaVerne was always telling me I could." "I was always rooting them on," Davis said. But "in the back of my mind I kind of had regrets." -- Davis' road to graduation began, characteristically, with her grandchildren. When they began taking piano from the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, she learned the center also offered lessons for adults. Music had always been Davis' great love. All of the Robertsons learned to play their family piano. They'd turn on WTIX and sing along as they did chores. Davis was mad about the Beatles and R&B. When she fell asleep, it was with the radio tucked under her pillow. Davis sang in multiple choirs all her life. Still, she felt under-informed. "I wanted to know the theory and the technicality," she said. "I wanted to be more educated about singing and vocal performance." Her NORD instructor suggested she take a class at Delgado. She went in spring 2012, "just to dabble in a couple of music classes," she said. The next thing she knew, she was completing an associate's degree and preparing to transfer to Dillard. "Once I dipped my foot in the water, I was like, yeah, I can do that," she said. -- This is how Davis has spent her last 2 1/2 years: Wake up at 4 a.m. in the family house where she still lives. Text her morning devotional verse to sisters and friends, maybe do some homework. Drop off the grandkids at St. Stephen's School. Drive to Dillard for classes. No lunch. Leave class, run over to New Orleans East to check on mom. Drive back to Uptown, pick up the granddaughters, get them to their activities. Back to Dillard for choir, which practices four nights a week. And she's still choir president, worship director and a Bible study regular at the Historic Second Baptist Church. "She has not slacked on anything," said Grisela Jackson, longtime friend and the pastor's wife. If LaVerne Robertson hadn't cared much about classes, LaVerne Davis was a teacher's dream, receiving scholarships and earning a perfect 4.0 four of her five semesters. On Davis' last day, Professor Raymond Vrazel told the diction class to stretch words out, "liiiiiiiike thiiiiiis," he boomed. Most of the students rounded their shoulders and clipped the goofy exercise short. They resisted sounding too strange. But Davis sat up, put on her reading glasses and looked at the text. "Awwwwful, cruuuuuuel," she recited. "She's a model student," her vocal coach Wen Zhang said. "Well, I didn't come to play!" Davis said. -- To be sure, Dillard took some adjustment. Whereas community college had plenty of older students, at the university, the mother hen was surrounded by spring chickens. At first, "I kind of had that feeling like I was out of place," Davis said. But "the students gravitated to me." Classmate Jada Brown, 20, grew up singing with Davis' granddaughters. Davis had been her mother's choirmate, not hers. Still, when the two altos sang together in the women's octet, "there were moments when we fed off each other because we were in the same range," Brown said. Davis threw herself into musical life on campus. She toured nationally with the university choir, riding in a bus with 20-year-olds. When they got to the hotel, she'd "make sure we all got a room before herself," Brown said. "I called her once and said, 'LaVerne, where are you?'" Jackson said. "She said, 'I'm on my way to a skating party with these children.'" At times she intervened to help keep young students on their path. "I did have moments where I just felt like I wanted to drop out," Brown said. Once she got so frustrated, she walked out in tears. Davis came out and reassured her, telling her to do the best she could. "She showed me that even when the song is hard, you just have to keep on pushing," Brown said. -- The night of her senior recital, Davis swept out in a floor-length gown and knocked them dead. She sang for an hour -- almost 20 songs, all memorized, in four genres and four languages. But the biggest surprise wasn't what she performed, but how. Everyone who sang with Davis knew she was an alto. A low alto, even. But at the recital, "She's singing soprano!" Robertson said. "I was just in awe listening to her. Like, who was that?" At an age when most voices drop lower, Davis' soared. And maybe it always could, underneath. "I was just informed today that I am really a mezzo-soprano," Davis said. On Saturday, Davis will give her last performance at Dillard University - at commencement, with star Janelle Monae looking on. Instead of considering a second retirement when she turns 64 in August, she'll start her new part-time job teaching music at her granddaughters' school. Even with a bachelor's degree, one thing won't change: Davis does not anticipate breaking out her high notes at church. Always the trouper, she said Second Baptist really needs altos. "Whatever they need me to do," she said. If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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