One graduate was in a bigger hurry than most to receive her diploma from Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan, on May 6, as she attended a commencement ceremony while in labor with her first child.
Henry Ford College President Russell A Kavalhuna addressed graduates shortly after the start of the ceremony, saying that he had learned of one graduate who needed a quicker ceremony than her peers.
Kavalhuna said: “When we bring people through Henry Ford College, they’ve got grit, and they’ve got perseverance, and this student has told me and us, ‘I’m gonna walk across that stage, despite the fact that I am 38 weeks pregnant, I am dilated, and I can’t wait for you, Russ, and your friends to talk for an hour and a half, so I need to graduate quickly.’ And so what do you think I said?”
“There’s a few things more important than a college degree, and that’s the thing she’s gotta get to,” he said, before soon-to-be mother Kelsey Hudie walked across the stage and received her diploma as a lullaby played in the background.
Hudie told Click on Detroit: “On the Tuesday before we graduated, they said that I was dilated two or three times, so that wasn’t going to stop me from walking across the stage. I even said if I had her before the walk, I was just going to hold her in my arms and walk across that stage.”
Hudie has since given birth to her baby girl, Nyla, and will train to be a teacher, local media reported.