Graduate beats all odds

Because of a speech impediment, Ellks didn't learn to read until the fifth grade.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
STRUTHERS -- Mary Ellks smiles when her daughter, Emily, reveals what she wants for Christmas.
"Harry Potter stuff," says the 10-year-old girl.
A fifth-grader, she's read the third, fourth and fifth books in the series.
Ellks points out the irony.
"I learned how to read in fifth grade," the mother said. "She's in fifth grade, and she's been through three big Harry Potter books."
As Emily reads poems to her little sister Julia, their mom tells her story.
Because of a speech impediment, Mary Ellks, then Mary Fiorenza, was labeled learning disabled. She had trouble pronouncing "w," "r" and "s" sounds, and she later learned it was because of a perforated eardrum. When she was in third grade, a school psychologist told her mother she would be "at best" a waitress someday.
As she sat with her husband, Tim, Ellks pondered what she would say to that psychologist if she saw him today.
"I'd invite him to my graduate party." She paused, then laughed. "Then I'd shove my diploma in his face."
Meeting her goal
Ellks, 31, will be among those graduating today during commencement ceremonies at Youngstown State University's Beeghly Center. She'll receive a bachelor's degree in sociology and then move on to "do something nice for somebody."
Ellks said her mother, Francie Fiorenza, will watch as she receives her diploma.
"When I brought my cap and gown home, my mom cried," she said. "I'm the first one in the family to graduate from high school and college."
Ellks grew up one of six children reared by a single mother. She said they struggled financially, and her mother moved often to make ends meet. As a result, she went to various schools throughout the county.
When Ellks started her fifth-grade year, she took reading courses in a second-grade classroom, often crying as she went. But, by the end of that year, she had moved into fifth-grade reading.
She remembers the first time the teacher called on her. She read aloud. Her teacher clapped, then the whole class started clapping. By high school she was mainstreamed in all classes except math. (She's overcome that, too: in a YSU algebra course, she earned a grade of B.)
"I always had that drive that 'you can't tell me what I can't do because I'm going to do it,'" she said.
But, she still holds the memories of the "LD" label she couldn't shed and of a teacher who told a counselor she didn't need college-prep courses.
"Being labeled like that, even today I thought, 'What if I don't pass my classes?'" she said.
Husband's pride
The mother has been working on her degree since 1996, taking a break to rear her youngest daughter. Besides being mom to Emily and Julia, who's 3, Ellks is stepmom to Kayla, 12, and Kyle, 8.
She and Tim have been married since 1999. Looking at their smiles, it's hard to determine who has more pride in Mary's accomplishments.
"Mary is a great driving force in inspiration and determination for our community. Mary brings hope to all those who have been told that hope is gone," Tim wrote in e-mails describing his wife. "She is hope for poor people, she is hope for women in society and she is hope for anyone raised to believe that they cannot exceed."
He remembers when he met her and "could see the motivation in her eyes." Since then, he's watched her study tirelessly each night, and she has inspired him to go back to school as well. He is working on a business degree at YSU with plans to pursue a master's degree.
"I always took everything for granted," said Tim, a Champion High School graduate who took college-prep courses. "I know she had to fight for everything she had to get. She was never given anything."
Ellks said she's relieved to be done -- her grade-point average is above a 3.0 -- and hopes to some day help victims of domestic violence. She has in the past volunteered to assist such victims.
"I feel wonderful about it because it's a goal I wanted to achieve," she said. "I always wanted to be something better. I can't wait to find a career where I can prove myself, prove to others that I am an asset."