“What some people saw as a mistake, having a child so young, to me was a catalyst,” said Dorothy Miller, who gave birth to her daughter in ninth grade at the age of 15. Having her child as a teen and coming from a low socioeconomic background pushed Miller to do more to ensure her daughter had a bright future.
Despite the obstacles, Miller attended nursing school, earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. before becoming the department chair of health sciences at St. Andrews University in Laurinburg.
Her daughter Shaquita Bandy recently graduated from nursing school, which Miller established at St. Andrews University. What’s more, the two received their BSN degrees on the same day, 13 years apart, according to WRAL News.
“It is interesting because we were at the car wash, washing the car, and her degree was laying in the trunk,” Bandy said to the outlet. “So I opened it and I said, ‘Did you know that you graduated on May 7?’ And she was like, ‘Really?’ Then I opened mine and I was like, ‘We graduated on the same day!’”
Miller recounted that when she became pregnant decades ago, her mother became her greatest supporter. Her mother did not want her to abandon her studies, so three days after Miller gave birth, she returned to school. Miller’s family and friends assumed she wouldn’t achieve much in her profession, but she wanted to show them wrong.
Miller dreamed of being a police officer or a nurse as a child in the tiny hamlet of Pinetops, North Carolina. So, after finishing high school, Miller gave her 5-year-old daughter to her mother so that she could join the military. She left the military to attend nursing school, working two jobs in the process to support her daughter Bandy and the other children she had given birth to.
“I got my associate degree, and then I got my bachelor’s degree and my master’s, and then I got my PhD, and then another master’s,” said Miller, who launched the first nursing school at St. Andrews University in 2021.
Bandy, one of the first nursing students to graduate from her program, now works in the intensive care unit at Pinehurst’s FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital.Bandy found nursing school difficult, especially because she was enrolled in a program founded by her mother. “It’s tremendous pressure, but they say pressure makes diamonds,” she explained.
As a candidate for the North Carolina Board of Nursing, her mother Miller hopes to address a scarcity of health care providers in rural communities.