BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Angela Carole Dennis knew what she had to do the night before she checked herself and her two sons into a Birmingham homeless shelter. She was so sure of the major life decision she was making, she began keeping a journal and called it “My first journal in the homeless shelter.” She didn’t even have enough money for gas and still remembers how much money she had in her wallet: $3.48.
“I had to do what I had to do. My only option was to get myself in a homeless shelter and start over,” she says. That was January 2003. Now, Dennis is the first recipient of the $1,250 William D. Burg Memorial Scholarship as a junior majoring in Information Systems at the University of Alabama (UAB) School of Business.
Dennis, a Clanton native who was living in Calera, came to the Birmingham shelter with no well-developed skills. “The first night I cried and cried and cried and cried. But I knew I was going to be OK.” She would not let her situation hold her back. “I didn’t have time to have a pity party,” she recalls. She enrolled in Lawson Community College in 2003 and graduated cum laude in the spring of 2006 with an associate degree of applied science in computer science.
She decided to continue her education at UAB and chose to stay in Information Systems because of the rapidly growing demand for top programmers and database administrators. She is pursuing a career as an Oracle database administrator and perhaps will undertake a business venture in computer forensics. Her sons are now ages 13 and 12. In addition to her studies, she is a temporary employee at UAB.
She credits her Christian faith for helping her through the rough times. Her advice for others going through trials is perseverance.
“Don’t give up. Do not give up. God will put people in your way to help you,” she says.
When Dennis went to the ceremony for the Burg scholarship, she did not realize she was to receive the award and was warmed hearing the speakers’ kind remembrances of Burg and the person that he was. Burg, an associate professor in the UAB Department of Accounting and Information Systems, died in a May 5, 2006, car accident.
“I felt very honored that somebody thought enough of the struggle that I had to give me his endowment,” she says.
She thanks Frank Messina, Ph.D., professor and chair, UAB Department of Accounting and Information Systems, and Tommie Singleton, Ph.D., associate professor of Accounting and Information Systems, for their encouragement.
“I know that Dr. Burg would be so proud for the first recipient of his memorial scholarship to be Angela, given her struggles in life and surefire determination to succeed,” Messina said. “Dr. Burg always pulled for the underdog. He loved to see his students succeed in their chosen careers and in life.”
For her success, in addition to crediting UAB faculty, Dennis also thanks her foster mother, the late Ida Wilson of Clanton, who took in Dennis and her five siblings when they were young.
“One of the neighbors told her, ‘Don’t take the Dennis children because they’ll never be anything,” Dennis recalls with tears. “Against all odds, she took us anyway.” Wilson sacrificed by working three jobs to care for her natural children.
Dennis remembers Wilson’s stories of why she sacrificed, saying, simply, “It had to be done,” words which inspired Dennis in her own struggle.
After Dennis received the scholarship, she went back and looked at that journal she started in the shelter, the one that helped her through earlier struggles. On the first few pages, she had written in big letters: “Quitting is not an option.”
“I went back when I got the scholarship and looked at it and read it and just reflected on the fact that I never thought I had a day like this coming,” she says. “I knew God had some great plans for me, but never to this extent.”