HOLYOKE — The pilgrimage of Holyoke twins Angela and Thamarre Laroche — from poverty in Haiti to four-year scholarships to Howard University — has been as arduous as it is remarkable. And it’s not over yet.
Getting into college is tough enough, let alone landing full scholarships. Those achievements would have seemed particularly unlikely back when their single mother enrolled her 5-year-old daughters at Holyoke’s E.N. White Elementary School. The girls spoke Haitian Creole and had so little English that they were placed in a special class for non-English speakers. But early on, the girls understood that education was the way to a better life.
“Education became my safe haven,” Angela said.
“Education was my only way out,” Thamarre added.
Fast forward 13 years. The ambitious 18-year-olds muscled through their senior year at Paulo Freire Social Justice High School in Chicopee while working part time and taking extra classes at Holyoke Community College. They overcame the eye-glazing experience of remote learning to finish with high honors. And Angela was named salutatorian.
But challenges remain. Remote learning meant limited access to guidance staff who might have steered the sisters towards the funding they will need to cover non-tuition expenses at Howard. Those expenses can be considerable. Robert Miller of Reading, a financial consultant who advocates for minority students, estimates the young women will need $10,000 each per year for room and board, books and personal expenses.
“This a common situation with students accepted at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities),” Miller said, because these colleges and universities have relatively modest endowments. “One of the other challenges confronting Howard,” Miller continued, “is that a disproportionate number of their student population come from low-income households and require robust financial aid packages.”
Miller is part of a loose confederation of supporters who have been moved by the twins’ plight and the painful possibility that they might have to walk away from their scholarships to Howard.
Miller said the sisters’ situation brings to mind author/journalist Damian Barr’s observation that “We are not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm. Some of us are on superyachts. Some of us just have one oar.”
Angela and Thamarre cannot yet rest at their oars, or oar. Despite the financial challenge, they are determined to attend Howard, the historically black university in Washington, D.C., whose alumni include Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, Chadwick Boseman and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is one of their heroes.
“I want to be a Howard woman,” Thamarre said. “To walk the halls she walked.”
Angela said Kamala Harris is an inspiration.
“If she can do it, I can do it,” she said.
Like Harris, both young women intend to be lawyers. The struggles their single mother went through after their father left have inclined Angela to go into family law. Their mother’s long path to citizenship impels Thamarre to focus on immigration law.
To realize their ambitions, to raise enough funds to cover all the costs, Angela and Thamarre are borrowing money, taking on additional part-time jobs, applying for foundation grants, going after work-study opportunities and inviting private contributions. They have set up an account dedicated to that purpose at Westfield Bank on Northampton Street. The account is dubbed “Laroche Two-ition.”
The sisters cite the many individuals — neighbors, clergy, teachers, godparents, college administrators and financial professionals who have taken up their cause.
“It really does ‘Take a Village,’” Angela observed.
They also are unabashed about the strength and guidance they have found in their faith.
“I was put onto this path by God,” Thamarre said. “He wouldn’t have opened that door if he didn’t want me to attend that school.”
Angela nodded in agreement: “My faith doesn’t let me give up.”