Student Spotlight: Continuing Family Tradition of Service, While Honoring Hispanic Heritage

Submitted on Feb 10, 2015

“I feel like I’ve had great influences from my grandmother in overcoming every obstacle.”

For more than half a century, work has been a constant for Marylou Oliverez Mason. Born into a family of migrant workers, Oliverez Mason began Jennessa taking the blood pressure of a migrant worker at a health fair that her grandmother (background) organized. harvesting crops at the age of 4. The family was based in Texas but traveled across the country wherever the work was, including Michigan. She learned to speak English by befriending the children of the farmers to trade Spanish and English words and phrases. Unlike many other children, she begged her father to let her go to school. Finally, when she was 12 years old, her father relented and she was able to start first grade.
 
Oliverez Mason progressed quickly enough to graduate on time. She married young, had five children and still found the time to put herself through nursing school. Then Oliverez Mason found a way to put her desire to care for people to use in a new way. She began volunteering in political advocacy positions and was eventually hired as civil rights investigator for the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and in 1986 began working for the Hispanic Latino Commission of Michigan, where she currently holds the position of executive director.
 
“She really advocated for the migrant workers to force the farmers to give them masks to protect them from pesticides, Rooker and classmates learn about Survival Flightand provide outhouses so they don’t have to squat in ditches,” says her granddaughter Jennessa Rooker, a University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN) senior from Grand Ledge, MI.  Rooker says that from a young age her grandmother encouraged her to look for ways to help others. “She also took me to her conferences all over, including Mexico, California, and Washington, D.C.,” says Rooker. “She really showed me what opportunities are out there.”   
 
Now Rooker is following in her grandmother’s footsteps of service. “I always loved health and sciences and being with people but wasn’t really sure of my career path,” she says. While in community college, Rooker participated in a summer program at UMSN through U-M’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. “I realized nursing was the right fit, and so I transferred to UMSN,” says Rooker. “I really like community and public health nursing, not just clinical. Yes, I can help that one person in clinical, but community health can impact so many people.”
 
Despite the support of her grandmother, Rooker says she was hesitant to tell her about her recent decision to apply for the Peace Corps. “We’re so close, so I was nervous to tell her I’d be away for two years. She was in tears but she told me she’s proud of me. I told her it’s time for me to start writing my own story.”  

Rooker and her grandmother at a conference in MexicoIt’s a story that Rooker hopes she’ll be able to tell in English and Spanish. She’s hoping if she’s accepted into the Peace Corps that she’ll be placed in a Spanish-speaking country. She's specifically interested in community health opportunities in Peru and Guatemala. “It was hard for her to be Hispanic growing up, so she didn’t teach my mom how to speak Spanish because she didn’t want her to have an accent. So now, I think it’s really important for me to reclaim that part of my heritage.”

While Rooker is waiting to hear from the Peace Corps, she’s finishing up a busy senior year that includes serving as UMSN’s president of the Student Nurses’ Association, the undergraduate representative of UMSN’s Committee on Academic, Admissions, and Scholastic Standing, and working with a PhD student on a research project focused on attention restoration for heart failure patients. She was also recently selected as the student speaker for the University of Michigan's Honors Convocation on March 15.  

“I realize it’s a lot to take on,” says Rooker. “But my grandmother always told me that anything is possible if you want to do it. I think good things will come to you if you work hard, you’re doing the right thing and keep trying.”