Graduate mom: Resident credits faith, family and Habitat for Humanity


Janice Coiley and her 5-year-old son Jimmy Ahmadi pose Friday outside their Habitat for Humanity home in Inverness./BRIAN LaPETER/Chronicle
                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                               By Nancy Kennedy
                                                                                                                       Citrus County Chronicle

                                                                                                      May 13, 2007

Janice Coiley remembers holding her  infant son Jimmy in her arms and seeing in his face the face of the future.

She was 39 and married to an Iranian man who didn’t love her. After they married, he told her he had only wanted to get his green card.

 Although she loved him, she loved her son more and knew she couldn’t raise a child in a home filled with tension and constant arguing.

So, she sold everything she had and, with her mom’s help, drove from her home in Seattle, Wash., to her mother’s home in Homosassa.

It took them 11 days, and she’s never looked back.

“When I held Jimmy in my arms, I knew I was invested in this now. I needed to care. I needed to become a teacher,” she said.

With thanks to her mother, to Habitat for Humanity and to God, Coiley received her diploma from the University of Central Florida on May 5, graduating with a degree in early childhood education.

Becoming a teacher had been Coiley’s childhood dream. Instead of the usual toys and games, she preferred her red pen so she could “correct” papers and a slate chalkboard so she could “teach” her brothers and sisters.

She grew up in Cape Cod, Mass., and after high school, went on to broadcasting school. She moved to Los Angeles and worked at an animation studio, then moved up to Washington, settling in Seattle.

She had a string of fun jobs, including working for an Alaskan cruise line in customer service. She lived on the cruise ship for a month at a time. It was her job to have fun and make sure the passengers had fun.

“Eventually, I got tired of doing for rich people on vacation,” she said. “I wanted to do something better, more meaningful.”

Her next job was as a career consultant at a computer school, and as she would walk past the classrooms, the memories of her childhood days pretending to be a teacher would nag at her.

But by then, she had met and fallen in love and married Jimmy’s father. That was in 1999. In 2002, she left her husband.

In January 2003, sharing her mother’s two-bedroom mobile home, Coiley started attending classes at Central Florida Community College and worked as a substitute teacher at local Citrus County elementary schools.

Meanwhile, Jimmy started attending Crystal River Preschool. The plan was that Coiley’s mom would watch Jimmy while Coiley took classes at night, but her mom had a stroke and Coiley faced dropping out of school.

That’s when a teacher at Jimmy’s preschool, Brenda Roach, stepped in to become more than her son’s teacher. She became a friend and a link in the chain that got Coiley to where she is today.

“I barely knew Brenda,” Coiley said, “but she offered to watch Jimmy. That enabled me to do my night classes.”

At the time, Roach was working on her own Habitat for Humanity house.

“Since I didn’t have any money to pay her, I started donating (sweat equity) hours toward her Habitat home,” Coiley said. “Brenda’s the one who suggested I apply for a Habitat home.

“My mom — thank God for her — let us live with her, but it was tight quarters and Jimmy was getting bigger and wilder,” she said.

Still, Coiley didn’t know how she could manage it, until Roach told her: “Yes, you can. You have to do this for you and for Jimmy.”

“She took it and ran with it,” Roach said. “She found out, ‘I can do it.’ She’s the one who told me to go back to school, so because of her, I’m doing it.”

Coiley worked on the organization’s newsletter, and within a short time she was putting in sweat equity hours on her own Habitat home. Members from her church, Nature Coast Community Church, helped with the construction and she and Jimmy moved in November 2004.

“She’s worked really hard to get to where she is now,” said Bonnie Peterson, resource development director for Habitat for Humanity of Citrus County. “I’m impressed by her energy and commitment to getting her education and to giving her son a better life. Her level of ability blew me away.”

“Habitat gave me a stable environment for Jimmy so I could do this,” Coiley said about her recent graduation. She also recently completed a 14-week internship at Hernando Elementary School and has submitted her application for a full-time teaching position. Now she’s waiting.

Jimmy will start kindergarten in August at Pleasant Grove Elementary School in Inverness. “In a perfect world, I’d get a job there,” Coiley said.

“I have to credit everything I’ve achieved to God,” she said. “At my graduation ceremony in Orlando, Mom was there, Jimmy was there, my friend Ginger and her daughter were there. I got to stand up — I was wearing my honors cords. Not bad for an almost-44-year-old single mother.”