When Dwight Brown Jr.wrote the essay he had no idea it would end up in a reporter's hands.

He didn't know the Doane College public relations machine would showcase his words as part of National Non-traditional Student Week, which, by the way, was last week.

So I'm late? We nontraditional students tend to be that way.

We don't do things when everybody else does.

Take Dwight. He'll be 35 next Tuesday. It says so right on the calendar on the refrigerator. His youngest daughter wrote down her daddy's big day in her careful 7-year-old handwriting.

Dwight has four kids, all of them in the kitchen Thursday night watching the oldest, Dwight III, make his special pizza for dinner.

His kids. His family. His God. Those are big things in Dwight Brown's life.

And school? That's important too.

"I recently realized I needed to pursue a college education," he wrote in the essay for a Doane-Lincoln campus class, "not just for myself, but also for my family … my children need to see their dad follow through with achieving a goal."

Do they see it?

Yes. Yes, they do.

Everybody's in school here on Laura Avenue.

Dwight's wife, Shelley, is taking organic chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She's trying to get into the physician's assistant program.

"She's the smartest woman I know," Dwight says.

 On Wednesday nights, they drop the kids off at youth group at their church and go study.

Other nights, they tuck the kids in and go off into the living room to study.

Every nontraditional student has a story. A journey of how he or she got from high school to here.

Dwight's journey starts in San Diego. His parents are divorced and he's living with his dad. There's no money. 

He's on a bus to a magnet school across town. He watches the other kids eat lunch and pretends he's not hungry.

He studies before the sun goes down because there's no electricity. He washes his clothes in the bathtub and hangs them to dry. Sometimes they’re still wet in the morning.

When the other students start talking about SATs and ACTs, he goes to his counselor.

What about college?

You're not college material, she tells him.

Part of him believes her. But another part keeps hearing his mom's voice.

You're like your dad. He can do anything he sets his mind to.

"I kind of held onto that," Dwight says.

But life kept moving, the way life does.

He joined the Army Reserves.  He became a father, first baby Dwight and then Jasmine.

He moved to Lincoln. He married his first wife. They divorced.

He met Shelley.  They married. Along came Jennaca and Daniel.

“A father takes part in making a baby,” he wrote in his essay, “but a dad takes care of that baby and makes a commitment to be a part of that child’s life no matter what…”

So he worked to support those kids.

He took a job at the Child Guidance Center. He worked at the Lincoln Correctional Center and Cedar's Youth Services and the Lincoln Council on Alcoholism and Drugs and Lincoln Action Program.

One day Dwight and his pastor talked about goals. In the Army he'd earned some college credit.

I've always wanted to finish college, Dwight said.

What's stopping you?

And that's how he ended up in an office on the Doane-Lincoln campus learning how to transfer credits and apply for grants.

He kept working, but started taking classes, one or two each term.

"College was always my plan," he says. "But I didn't think I had the time to do it or the energy to do it or the money to do it."

Back when he was in high school, a friend offered him a way out of poverty. All he had to do was hold a gun and watch his buddy's back while he sold dope.

He took the gun. He thought about what he could buy with that drug money. Sharp clothes and good food and new furniture.

He handed the gun back.

He knew too many people who had taken the easy way.

Dwight is on track to graduate with a degree in human relations in May.  The first of seven brothers and sisters in his family to get a four-year college degree.

The Doane public relations machine won't be able to call him a nontraditional student much longer.

But they'll always be able to call him one very fine man.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com