Once lost. Now, leading the way.

Editor’s Note: The following piece published in our Best of the Boot 2022 magazine as one of our Who Wayne’s Watching features. We felt, as Dr. Patty Pfeiffer was officially inaugurated as Wayne Community College’s president Thursday, that her story was worth sharing here to commemorate the milestone.

She could have given up after she dropped out of college.

She could have spent the rest of her life scrubbing floors and toilets in the rest home she found herself working in after leaving Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

She could have blamed her childhood — the mental illness that saw her mother institutionalized during her formative years; the fatherless home that “always” required public assistance; the having to stand in line at a Salvation Army for government cheese.

She could have fallen victim to “the cycle.”

But somehow, a teenage Patty Pfeiffer kept the faith.

“I just knew there was something better for me,” she said, holding out her hands. “I knew there was something better.”

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A self-described “smart kid” graduated from high school with honors.

She had always wanted to help people via the medical field — perhaps, because of what had happened to her mother.

But when she transitioned from a 350-student graduating high school class to a university setting where there could be 300 students in a single classroom, she “got lost.”

“I didn’t have an advisor to say, ‘You’re not getting balancing these equations. You probably should drop that course.’ And I was a first generation, so I didn’t have somebody say, ‘You get through (high school) and you’re going to a university and we’re going to support you.’ None of my family had been to college,” Pfeiffer said. “I ended up with a not really good GPA, so essentially, I didn’t go back for my spring semester.”

She could have seen it as a failure, but somehow, she looked for a silver lining.

“I had excelled in ROTC and gotten an A,” Pfeiffer said. “So, I went to a recruiter, and I said, ‘I don’t care what I do in the military, but I’ve got to find something.’”

And while she waited to enlist, she found work as a janitor.

“Then, I went off and served my nation,” she said.

Pfeiffer had no idea that her nation would serve her, in return, a second chance at a higher education.

She spent six years in the Airborne and married an airman who ended up being stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

She heard about Wayne Community College and discovered she still had the chance to help people via the medical field.

“I knew I still wanted to do something medical and Wayne Community College, it was right here in what has become our hometown,” Pfeiffer said. “It was an amazing experience.”

During her time at WCC, she earned associate degrees in applied science and nursing.

She went on to become a nurse — directing patient care in labor and delivery and assisting those tending to patients in the orthopedic and surgical units at Lenior Memorial Hospital and the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Medical Center.

And she graduated from East Carolina University with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing.

Despite all odds, she had realized her childhood dream.

And she owed it all to a small community college in Eastern North Carolina.

“Wayne Community College, it changed my life,” Pfeiffer said. “It changed the dynamics of my entire family.”

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She could have stopped at her bachelor’s degree and remained a working nurse.

She could have made a solid income and raised her family.

But Pfeiffer found that her calling had changed.

So, she returned to WCC as a nursing instructor — to pass on wisdom, yes, but more importantly, to be an advocate for those students who, like her, needed a community college environment in order to succeed.

Pfeiffer has remained at the school ever since, ascending through the ranks until her journey culminated in her being named president of the institution in January.

“I often tell people, ‘We are in the business of changing lives every day at Wayne Community College,’ she said. “It certainly changed mine.”

And her hope is that sharing her story — one of failure experienced and adversity overcome — will inspire the next generation of Patty Pfeiffers.

“I’ve often said this to students: ‘One failure doesn’t have to define you.’ Me not doing well that first semester at a university did not define who I was,” she said. “Yes, I needed a little time exploring me … but I knew that I still had the skills and ability to be successful — that one failure did not define me. It diverted my path, but it didn’t stop me.”

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Somewhere in Wayne County, there is a “smart kid” who dropped out of college because they got lost.

There is another who might be scrubbing floors and toilets in a rest home.

There might even be one who has a mother suffering from mental illness — who grew up in a fatherless home or remembers standing in line for government assistance.

Pfeiffer is ready to be their champion.

“All they have to do is email me. I don’t mind sitting down with a student and telling them some of my story. They need to know, ‘You know what? That didn’t define me,’” she said. “They need to know that we change generations, and we provide the training … to offer an individual life-sustaining wages and family-sustaining wages so they can make a difference in their lives and their families’ lives. They just have to come through our doors. I hope that (telling my story) touches somebody and they’ll say, ‘Why not me?’”