A GRADUATION CELEBRATION
Co-workers, family surprise first-generation college student denied ceremony by pandemic
DANBURY — When Iyanna Latimer learned her University of Maryland graduation ceremony was canceled, she started to cry.
She expected it to be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it was still a letdown.
The 22-year-old Danbury woman is the first in her family to graduate from college. After working as many as three jobs at once to put herself through college, she wanted to celebrate by walking across the stage and getting her diploma.
“It was really heartbreaking,” Latimer said.
But on the day of what would have been her commencement ceremony, her co-workers at J. Lawrence Downtown in Bethel surprised her with a celebration.
Latimer said she walked outside to help bus a table to find balloons, signs, and her co-workers and customers clapping. Family members lined up in cars and on the patio, and her boss gave a speech congratulating her.
“It was something special and something I’m never going to forget,” she said. “It made my day very,
very, very special.”
Latimer was hired as a server at J. Lawrence when the restaurant opened in 2017 and would drive from Maryland to Connecticut at least twice a month on weekends to work, said Kelly LaReau, co-owner of the restaurant.
“She just has this work ethic that’s amazing,” she said.
LaReau called Latimer “inspirational” and said the restaurant wanted to do something special to recognize her.
“She's just an unbelievably wonderful, smart young woman and is doing a lot of good things in this world,” she said.
Latimer graduated with a degree in criminology and criminal justice. She minored in public leadership. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in social work program at the University of Connecticut in the fall and wants to become a forensic child interviewer.
In this position, she would interview children who have witnessed or experienced abuse to aid a criminal investigation. Her mother is a social worker and she said she would love to work for a child advocacy center.
Latimer said she picked University of Maryland without visiting the campus because it was rated as diverse and a top program for her major.
Her mother Cindee Latimer said her daughter took charge of researching colleges and has been good at prioritizing her time.
“She is just a really good go-getter,” she said. “She has a work ethic that does not stop.”
Iyanna Latimer took out loans for her freshman and sophomore years, but was rejected for a loan her junior year. She got a job as a resident assistant, which covered her room and board and allowed her to get a loan for tuition. She picked up another job on campus and arranged her class schedule so that she would have long weekends to work at J. Lawrence.
After her car was totaled in a crash, she did not have a vehicle for about a year. She went home less frequently, but would still make the about nine-hour trip on public transportation to work about once a month. Once she purchased a car, she came home two to three times a month.
She studied abroad in Italy one summer, working with an organization that assisted migrants and refugees. During an internship, she worked with human trafficking victims, helping a 14-year-old boy who had been trafficked from El Salvador to gain asylum in the United States.
Those experiences helped shape her decision to work with victims and survivors, she said.
“There was something about helping someone gain asylum and work through their trauma,” Iyanna Latimer said. “That was just a great feeling that can’t be topped.”
A graduation ceremony would have been the “culmination” of everything her daughter had done to get there, Cindee Latimer said. But her daughter still had the experience of making friends, studying abroad and growing, she said.
“The stage walk was the pinnacle of all this, but it still doesn’t take away from the person that she morphed into from all those four years,” Cindee Latimer said.