Barbara Crump has experienced a lot in the decades she has pursued her education.

Yet while moving to another state, working for more than 25 years in nursing and receiving her doctorate in her 60s, she still considers the place she grew up, Ampthill Road in Cartersville, her home.

She said she was 15 when she became pregnant and had to drop out of high school in ninth grade. The pregnancy, societal attitudes at the time, as well as intimate partner abuse, forced her to live with her grandmother and aunt in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“You really couldn’t go back to school if you were pregnant and were not married,” Crump, 65, said.

She said most of her family continues to live in Cartersville, and she visits for holidays and other events. Crump, whose maiden name is Johnson, moved to New Jersey in the 1970s. She returned to school and received her General Educational Development (GED), and in 1987 obtained her bachelor’s degree of science in nursing from William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.

She said while she was proud of her education achievements, it was not an easy process.

“As you grow and develop, you get to know yourself,” Crump said. “But I didn’t have that opportunity to get to know myself because I had a child. I couldn’t complete my high school, get to know people, have those friends that you connect with in high school. I didn’t have that. So it was all a process for me.”

She credits her pursuit for education in part to her current husband, Spencer, who not only encouraged her to return to school, but who also grew up in Cartersville with her family.

Crump, while also raising her children and working full time, pursued and received her Master of Science from Saint Peter’s College to become a nurse practitioner in 2003. She continued to work as an advanced practice nurse and in 2010, began to study for her doctorate of Philosophy in Nursing from Phoenix University.

It was a 6-year process, but she said the late nights and study hours were worth it to pursue a field she was passionate about, and to be an example to her children and 12 grandchildren.

“They’re excited,” Crump said about her family’s response to her receiving her doctorate in 2016. “I’m trying to encourage them and mentor them.”

“You just have to do the work,” Crump said. “Education is opportunity for everyone. It’s out there. You just need to do it to get there, and I tell my grandkids that too. If you do the work, you will get the benefits.”

“You have to give up some things, too,” Crump said, laughing. “Sometimes you don’t sleep because you’re studying for exams.”

She said her doctorate dissertation was a qualitative study on nurses perception of how patients should be treated at the end of their lives. Crump said she interviewed 11 oncology nurses for “Exploring nurses’ perceptions of dignity during end-of-life care.”

“They wanted curriculums in undergrad for palliative care (care for people with terminal illnesses) and maybe a workshop to discuss dignity and reflection on self-dignity, so a lot of that was in communication, and communication is very important when you’re dealing with death and dying,” Crump said, noting the importance of having training people to help them at the end of their lives.

“That’s my passion. Dignity, respect, and just empowering people in death and dying,” Crump said. “We shouldn’t suffer. We have hospice, we have that. But it can be a struggle, and how do we make it better?”

She said she is going to continue her research, developing a model for end of life care, and look into ways to implement the model. She said this issue became particularly relevant when her mother became ill and died in March 2017 of colon cancer.

“I stopped work, I came home when she was dying,” Crump said. “I took care of her at the hospice, make sure she had good quality, had the family around her. It is very important.”

She said she is now working to create a mentorship program in New Jersey high schools and colleges to help students interested in pursuing nursing. Ultimately, she said her goal upon retirement is to return to Cartersville.

“That’s my home,” Crump said. “Even though I raised my children here in New Jersey, I always called it my home.”

She said she wants to continue to do what she does now, give back to the community and empower people through wellness.