Chemeketa Voices

Serendipity:
Kelly Bash

Not getting up to go to class is easy. Finding reasons to go can be difficult. Chemeketa Community College student Kelly Bash is no different except her reasons talk back.

“There’s mornings when it’s just the last thing I want to do, then my kids tell me they’re not going to school if I’m not going to school,” said Bash, 29, and a mother of four.

Everyone gets up, goes to school.

Almost two years ago, Bash decided she needed a change.

“I just knew there had to be something better out there than the life I was living. I packed up four kids and we moved from Washington to Salem,” Bash said.

Local family helped provide a support structure and she found a steady job with a local grocery chain. But she soon realized that her life change wasn’t entirely complete.

“I had been working in grocery stores for years. I knew it, clerking was steady work and it was safe, but it wasn’t something my kids could be proud of. I wanted them to know that if they worked hard, they could do well,” said Bash.

Bash had looked into the classes at her local community college in Washington, but was unimpressed with the mostly business-related offerings. After the move to Salem, Bash began looking at what the area colleges had to offer. She’d enjoyed working as a roofer and the physical labor involved in the job. Time was also a consideration; she hoped to earn a degree with less than a four-year commitment.

She visited Chemeketa with a friend and, while exploring the campus, Bash spotted someone wearing the protective leather chaps and jackets required for welding students.

“I wasn’t sure what the guy was doing, but I knew I wanted to be doing it,” she said.

She was looking through a catalog and settled on welding because it sounded fascinating and it met her time requirements. She was ecstatic when she went into a store to buy her protective equipment and it was the same gear she’d seen the other student wearing.

Cool gear wasn’t the only reason she chose welding. It’s a skill she hopes to learn well enough to pass on to her three sons Seth, 8, Addie, 6, and Noah, 2. She’d be happy to teach it to her daughter, Ayden, 6, as well, but “she’s kind of got her own thing going on.”

A year and a half into the program, her instructors, Mike Myers and Mike Pintler, still amaze her.

“They can walk up to my work and say, ‘It looks like you went slow here and then sped up, and here it looks like your arc got a little long.’ My mouth hits the ground because it’s exactly what I did,” said Bash.

One day, she hopes to show off her skills in a weld-off against her instructors. For now, she’s simply looking forward to driving around town and pointing out to her kids all the places she helped build.

With more than 70 study programs, Chemeketa’s wide range of options exposed Bash to opportunities she might have otherwise overlooked. 

 “Chemeketa just offers so much. If there are people out there who are really interested in doing better with their lives, Chemeketa is the place to start."

By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.

Updated March 5, 2008 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.