Commencement Is a Family Affair for a Family of Grads

The University of Cincinnati’s Commencement ceremony will truly be a family affair for 50-year-old Margie Stayton and her two children, Tamara, aged 27, and Benjamin, aged 23. All are marching at Commencement on Saturday, June 14.

“We lucked out. We’re all in the same afternoon ceremony,” says Tamara, who’s earning a bachelor’s in health sciences.
 
Benjamin will march away proudly with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering while Margie achieves a degree in nursing.

“I originally started in 1977, but it only lasted one year,” Margie jokes of first becoming a licensed practical nurse in 1980 and then earning her associate’s degree at UC’s Raymond Walters College in 1995.

Mom hit the books again in 2005, the same time Tamara decided to enroll in the College of Allied Heath Sciences; Benjamin was just a few years ahead, starting a five-year engineering program in 2003.

The only difficulty that ever arose, they admit, was during times when they all lived together and had to share the one family computer. “It’s not fun when you all have papers due at the same time,” Tamara recalls with a smile. 

The Staytons are carrying on a long-standing UC family tradition. Margie’s father, Irvin Zipperstein, 82, graduated from the UC College of Law (class of ’49), as did her father-in-law, Charles Kimmel Stayton, 80, with a degree in civil engineering (class of ’54). Charles’ mother, Ethel Kimmel (deceased), graduated from the College of Music (the forerunner to the College-Conservatory of Music) in 1911.

Caps off to the Stayton family!   

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