Finding Strength through Loss
Commencement ends a bittersweet chapter for SAR grad
The first time Avion Cummings laid eyes on BU was during a trip to Boston the summer before her senior year of high school. When they toured the campus, her father, Leroy, kept nudging her, saying, “This is a really nice place.” They’d seen so many other colleges, he said, but this was the first school he felt was worthy of her.
Shortly after Cummings was accepted to BU on a full scholarship, her father died unexpectedly. She used her grief as an opportunity to help others and became president of the BU chapter of Actively Moving Forward, a peer-led support group for college students grieving the illness or loss of a loved one.
A Bay State Road resident for all four years, she worked several jobs to help pay her living expenses—including stints at Late Night Kitchen and Starbucks and as a tutor for BU Athletics Student-Athlete Support Services and Upward Bound at Boston University. For the past two years, she’s been a resident assistant at 201 Bay State Road and Towers.
After graduation, she plans to return home to New York City, where she hopes to land a job as a personal trainer and then go on to earn a master’s in occupational therapy.
Reflecting on her college career, Cummings says her time at BU has been transformative. “I think I’m less shy,” she says. “I’m not as afraid to talk to people, and I think I’m more confident in what I can do. Just juggling everything that I’ve juggled and making it through probably the hardest time of my life and also going to college and finishing on time, I think it really shows how strong I am.”
Commencement, she says, is a bittersweet occasion. May 15 would have been her father’s 68th birthday. What does she think he would feel if he could be there with her? “He would probably be pridefully silent. He would sit in his chair, whisper to my family members how hard I worked, and then stand with a grin on his face when I walked across the stage.”
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