High School Graduation a Family Affair for Mother, Son : Education: Former dropouts find success, joy in bid to improve their lives.

Deanna Hemmestad and her son, Jerome, have learned some of life’s hardest lessons together. One lesson they now know by heart is the value of a diploma.

The Hemmestads of Oceanside are both high-school dropouts. But they returned to class this year, got their credits and will graduate together June 12 from MiraCosta College’s adult high-school diploma program.

“There’s nothing better than having someone next to you who is struggling for the same goals,” said Jerome, 21.

And struggle they have. Although they had different reasons for leaving school, they repeatedly have faced the consequences of their decisions in personal and occupational dead-ends.

“The hardest thing for me,” Deanna, 41, said, “was whenever you go into a job interview they ask you, ‘What was your last year of completion in school?’ I always wanted to lie. I hated to tell the truth, that I didn’t graduate from high school. And it bothered me for years. I think that’s why I always had nightmares about going back.”

The Hemmestads’ story goes back to Ft. Dodge, Iowa, in 1967, where Deanna grew up. At the age of 17 she became pregnant, forcing her to quit school in her senior year. She married her boyfriend, the father of the baby, who was still in school.

“It was really tough,” she recalled. “Both of us were going to high school, and I didn’t have anybody to watch the baby, so I just dropped out of school.”

She and her husband had three more children in the next seven years, and Deanna became entrenched as a homemaker. To earn extra money, Deanna taught herself to bake and decorate special-occasion cakes that she sold to people in town.

Times turned tough for the Hemmestads when the farming crisis hit Ft. Dodge in 1980, closing the box factory where her husband worked. The family moved to College Station, Tex., where Deanna’s husband got an oil-field job and Deanna worked as a baker and cake decorator at Texas A & M University.

After a few years, however, the Hemmestads’ marriage turned sour, and they divorced in 1987. Deanna then left her husband and children and came to Oceanside.

At that time, figuring he could be a success without sitting through classes that bored him, Jerome dropped out of his Texas high school at the beginning of his senior year.

Although he never had problems getting work, Jerome said he always felt his lack of a diploma kept him from advancing beyond low-level positions. After moving to Oceanside two years ago, he entered the MiraCosta program but still bounced in and out of classes.

When he recently failed in his attempt to start his own building painting business, however, he knew he had to get serious. “I didn’t have the knowledge backing me up that I needed,” he said.

And then the final motivation arrived.

Deanna, working in the bakery of a Vons supermarket, was hit on the head by a 40-pound box of frozen pies that fell off the top of a cabinet. The neck injury she suffered put her on disability while she underwent rehabilitation.

Facing the possibility that she might not be able to continue as a baker, a job that requires her to lift heavy tubs of dough and pastry, Deanna decided to use the time she had on her hands.

“I just decided that I wanted to go back and get my diploma,” she said.

To her surprise, Deanna found out she needed only a few classes to gain her diploma. So this spring she enrolled in the program, which Jerome already was attending.

“When I got back in there it was really fun. Nice,” she said. “It was good to use the brain for something again.”

At school, the Hemmestads drew the attention of Lynda Lee, dean of community education.

“What caught my eye was that they were here together, and there was an affinity between them, a sparkle,” Lee said. “Each one seemed to be very concerned about how the other was doing. They’ve both been very serious, conscientious students.”

Jerome explained it like this:

“When you go back after the fact, and you’re looking for an education, then it’s a whole different situation. You don’t screw around and miss classes and stuff like that. You want to learn.”

The Hemmestads also amazed some of their classmates when they ended up in the same economics class together. “They thought we were married,” Jerome said sheepishly.

Mother and son said they have quizzed each other and competed against each other to see who could get the best grades. Deanna announced proudly that she usually won.

“You know how kids are during their teen-age years. They don’t think their parents know anything,” she said. “But I can surprise them.”

After the Hemmestads receive their diplomas in two weeks, they’re thinking of having a back-yard barbecue to celebrate with friends. Then they plan to take college-level courses. Deanna is considering computers or nursing. Jerome wants to study something that can get him into real estate or another business field.

“Going to school, I think, made me feel good about me,” Deanna said. “Twenty-five years of my life was run by kids. Now the kids are pretty much old enough, and so I’m doing something for me. And I’m going to graduate, and I’m going to go back to college, and I’m going to do something for me for a change.”

Jerome has a new outlook, too.

“I want to go gung-ho now,” he said. “I’m tired of working 9 to 5, paycheck to paycheck. I want to make something of myself.”