Humble Beginnings
My HCC Story – Gina Barry '94
Attorney Gina Barry '94, of Holyoke, is chair of the Estate Planning and Elder Law Department at Bacon Wilson, P.C., in Holyoke and a 2015 recipient of HCC's Distinguished Alumni Award. She gave the following remarks to fellow HCC alumni during a Dec. 8 lunchtime talk titled "Inspired Giving" at the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute.
'I was in high school, and I heard the other students talking about the SAT – it was a test you were supposed to take on a Saturday morning. That was not going to happen.
I was the child of a waitress and a welder. College wasn't important. A test on a Saturday morning? Not a chance.
So, I graduated from high school, and my parents said, you can work full time or you can go to college. I thought, college is probably going to be a lot easier. And then I thought, uh oh. I don't have any SAT scores. What am I going to do?
Lo and behold, here's HCC up on the hill from my house, shining like a beacon, saying, we don't need an SAT score. And so off I went to Holyoke Community College.
The first two years of Holyoke Community College I majored in card playing. In high school, I had been a student who was in AP classes. At HCC I was receiving B's and C's without reading a book, attending class minimally, and really kind of unengaged. My second year, there was another student who said something to me. His name was Brian. He said to me, "Gina, you couldn't get an A if you tried." I said, excuse me. He's like, "You heard me. You couldn't get an A if you tried." I said, really?
So, I started reading the books and going to class, and, lo and behold, it was interesting and fun, and I was learning so much I got straight A's that semester. I had more fun delivering that report card to Brian than I ever had to my parents.
From there, I realized that if I could engage myself, and what have you, that I would really be able to blossom. And that's where the professors of HCC came in. Because, as soon as they saw that that spark had been lit within me, they wasted no time making sure that I received the fullest education that I possibly could. I think of professors like Doris Knight, who read some horrible papers that I wrote, or Professor Baker who had me recite the first 40 lines of The Canterbury Tales in exchange for a midterm, but this was in Old English, so I had to stand in front of the class and, in Old English, recite the first 40 lines of The Canterbury Tales, but boy wasn't that more fun than writing an essay.
Those professors were there, and they were ready and waiting when I finally blossomed and they realized there was some potential there. Those professors were also the ones who said to me, "You know, you can be more than what you think you could be," and they connected me with my career advisor, and the next thing I knew, I had a plan. I was going to leave HCC with a four-year associate degree, and I was going to transfer to Westfield State, which is now Westfield State University, and do two more years of school there, and if that went well there was Western New England University waiting for me in Springfield for me attend law school.
So, I graduate Holyoke Community College. I graduate Westfield State, magna cum laude. I'm really having a great time working three part-time jobs, really working hard. (As President Timmons was saying, we are driven. We're driven to be more than we can be.)
And so, in my family, I am not just the first student to graduate from college, but the first to graduate with a graduate degree. And I'm now proud to say that I was able to go to the graduations of my nieces and nephews, who also matriculated through Holyoke Community College after watching their aunt take this path and become successful. I'm glad to say I have an award-winning legal practice with Bacon Wilson, where I have been for 24 years, and I owe it all to my humble beginnings at HCC.
HCC is an organization that provides grace, that is forgiving, that allows students to blossom in their own way, in their own time, and will be there to catch you if you fall.
I really get chills telling my story. I couldn't be more grateful.'
