ANSON COUNTY, N.C. — A North Carolina woman graduated this summer after nearly two decades of her college career kept getting interrupted by life.

After hitting several speed bumps in her march toward a degree, Judy Little, a Wadesboro business owner, hunkered down and graduated 18 years after starting classes.

Little has a busy week almost every week. When she’s not running her business, she’s ministering or giving back to the community. 

"The smile, this is what ... I love making them feel good,” Little said, while looking at old pictures of her cutting hair at a local senior center.

Even her decision to open and operate a salon was born out of a desire to help others.

"I love doing it because it helps beautify the lives of people, I get to hear so many stories,” Little said.

The North Carolina native moved to the Wadesboro area about 18 years ago to continue her religious ministry.

There, she married her husband, Oscar Little, whom she calls her "provider and great supporter.” 

But life has a way of throwing Judy Little curve balls.

Her college journey started with an idea back in the late 1990s.

“My son went off to college, I was going through a divorce,” Little said. “I was empty nest[ing], and I love children, so I decided to go and become a foster parent.”

Little explained she enjoyed fostering children and learned from them about their lives, struggles and concerns. It was in those moments she decided she was going back to school.

"To learn about kids and where they’re coming from and the environment they’re coming from. And how can I, as a foster parent, help better their lives?” Little said.

But life threw another curve ball. Her sister died in a car crash in 2001, leaving Little to raise her three teenagers.

"I had no dream— no plan that it would be my own family that I would be having to take in and take care of,” Little explained.

Little is one of 18 siblings, she joked mom and dad made an even 20. Caring for the needs of family members was not anything new, but it delayed her start to a collegiate career.

When her nieces and nephew were ready to start their collegiate careers after high school, she decided to go with them. 

She enrolled in early childhood classes at Stanly Comunity College in Albemarle in 2003 but then moved to Wadesboro later in the year and married Oscar Little. She switched her classes to South Piedmont Community College in 2004, but then life found a way to interrupt again.

“Life got busy, enjoying becoming a grandma, August 3, 2004,” Judy Little added.

She was a busy grandma, and had to keep up with her business, church ministries and volunteer work. So, college had to wait once again.

Little worked as a substitute teacher, continued to run her business, cut hair for seniors, mentored young people in how to run a business and took girls and young women to conventions and competitions to show them how to be a successful female business owner. 

“Let them get that experience of inside a business, running a business, some of the things it takes to run a business,” Little explained.

Her "You Are So Special Beauty Salon," located on West Caswell Street in Wadesboro, became a home base for mentoring young people.

Eventually, the time was right to return to college in 2019, but she had changed her mind on her degree. This time, she was going to get a business degree and use it to help her salon and make sure she was doing things right.

But, a counselor reminded her how close she was to finishing what she started all those years ago.

"She [the counselor] said, ‘Come on back.’ She said, ‘You’re too close to throw in the towel,'” Little said.

So, in the spring of 2019 she returned to South Piedmont Community College to finish her degree in early childhood education.

Sadly, life had one more thing to throw at her, which proved almost too much to bear. In March of 2021, Little’s sister, Mildred Loretta Harris, the oldest of her sisters, died of COVID-19.

"My heart was so heavy, and I’m like, ‘God you got to help me, you’ve got to give me something to help me stand.’ Because, I didn’t feel like I could make it. And I was going through one of my drawers and I found a letter and birthday cards,” Little said through tears.

The letter was from months earlier, when she transcribed what her sister told her about how God would bless her and her husband for the work they were doing. 

“I found that letter that Sunday morning, and I tell you, I felt like superwoman. And I’m so glad she told me to write it down,” Little continued.

The letter kept her spirit in March, leading her to graduation just two months later at the age of 60. Eighteen years after her journey had started, her older sister’s spirit helped her finish it.

"I am so blessed, I am strong as I am and I am sharp as I am, because I have been around some iron, and iron sharpens iron,” Little said simply.

She already plans to use her degree in early childhood education from South Piedmont Community College. She wants to open a daycare and because of her life experiences, she wants to make sure the daycare has a special employee to help the children.

"I definitely want to have a counselor in my daycare, because tragedies happen all the time in lives of all children. And children have nobody to talk to,” Little said.

Now, with her degree in hand and new experiences on the horizon, Little said all her recent success is possible because of her faith, along with support and love from her family.