Shirley Sewell is this issue’s Feature Student, but in accordance with the life she lives, the more appropriate title should be determined student. Thirty-seven years ago, Shirley became a paraplegic, due to an accidental gunshot wound in 1971. When she was forty-four, she attended Edgecliff College, here in Cincinnati, but was unable to finish.
Now, at forty-nine years of age, she is back in college and in her sophomore year at Raymond Walters, doing quite well. She has been married for twenty-two years and has one daughter who also attends school full time at the University of Cincinnati.
Shirley is working towards her degree in Medical Billing and Coding, with hopes of obtaining a job in a doctor’s office or hospital and later owning her own business as she works from home.
Shirley loves people and is involved in the Red Cross club here at Raymond Walters. She also volunteers as a board member for the Center for Independent Living Options, which is an organization geared towards helping individuals with disabilities and homeless people.
Shirley has faced many obstacles in her life, but she is unwilling to let any of them stand in her way of becoming who she wants to be.
As a recent winner of the Winnie Unnewehr Fraser Scholarship, she is on her way to reaching her goals as she will become the first in her family to graduate from college and earn her degree.
Shirley Sewell is a great example of when the going gets tough, the tough get going, or in this case, the unstoppable.