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Hard work leads to double graduation

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Photo by Dan Lassiter

Danielle Pakes got her degree in welding from Blackhawk Technical College on May 17. Then she walked across the stage at Monterey Stadium on Friday with the rest of the Parker High school Class of 2008.

JANESVILLE — Danielle Pakes graduated before she graduated.

She got her degree in welding from Blackhawk Technical College on May 17. Then she walked across the stage at Monterey Stadium on Friday with the rest of the Parker High school Class of 2008.

Steve Huth, who has overseen the district’s vocational programs for 15 years, said Pakes is the first Janesville student he knows of to get a one-year technical diploma before graduating from high school.

To do it, Pakes first had to exhaust the school’s shop-class offerings. Then she spent every afternoon and evening of her senior year at Blackhawk Technical College, taking courses in communications, blueprint reading and machine shop, along with MIG, TIG, stick and flux core welding.

She couldn’t have done it on her own. Pakes credits helpful teachers and counselors at Parker and the same at BTC. Above all, she credits her family, who supported her and taught her about hard work.

She learned about work in an ideal place—a family farm.

It was up at 4 or 4:30 most days to do chores. Pakes’ older sister liked indoor work, but Pakes preferred the outdoors. Usually, she fed and cared for the calves while her brothers milked.

Then she was back in the house, packing lunches for her younger brothers. More chores waited after school.

“It pays off, now, but at the time it was hard,” she said. “I don’t think I’d be where I am today if I didn’t grow up on a farm. The work ethic is phenomenal.”

Little did Pakes know how much she would need that ethic. Last summer, she gave birth to a son.

She doesn’t regret it. But she has changed.

She’s now fiercely determined to make a life for her family, something she is doing without the father. And she’s deeply in love with little Grant, as anyone can see in her beaming smile any time she talks about him.

It was hard to tell her parents—Jim and Bernadette Pakes—that she was pregnant, she said, but they and her extended family now dote on and help care for Grant.

It was hard to deal with the stares and the comments from students at school, too. But teachers were supportive, something Pakes is grateful for.

Someday, she’d like to help pregnant girls who are struggling. She’d tell them they don’t have to stop their lives or give up.

“You don’t have to hide, and you don’t have to be ashamed of it,” she said.

As she completed her BTC degree, she job-shadowed at J.P. Cullen & Sons. A BTC counselor set it up after Pakes told her that working for J.P. Cullen was her dream job.

Cullen workers have been nice to her, she said, but she had to take some kidding that she might like a job in the office.

“I was, like, ‘You guys like it out here, and I like it out here, too,’” she said. “I could not be put in the office.”

Pakes also was accepted to the district’s elite Advanced Placement Construction course during her senior year.

And she found time to be an assistant coach for the track team at her alma mater, St. Patrick’s School.

She was sad to give up her own participation in the shot put, discus, pole vault and long jump, but she said it was worth it.

But Pakes was making an impression at BTC: “She’s probably one of the best welders in the program,” said instructor Mark Prosser. “She learns fast.”

Parker staff like her, too. Counselor Denise Kruser calls her “an amazing girl,” even as a freshman.

“She always had a strong work ethic, was very respectful, probably one of the most respectful kids I know,” Kruser said.

The past year has been exhausting at times.

“There were a few moments that I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ But then I thought, ‘I’m a Pakes. We are all very strong, and we all help each other out.’”

And all Pakes had to do for motivation was to think of her son. Her Job 1 is his future.

“That’s the most important thing for me, to get that money saved up and be stable,” she said.

Pakes plans to live at home, for now. Grant loves the farm. His first word was “mama,” but his second was “tractor.”

She starts work Monday with her dream employer, J.P. Cullen, as a laborer. She plans to eventually become an ironworker or carpenter.

Her first job site will be a familiar one. She’ll be working on the Parker High School expansion project.

“I’m excited to see it when it’s all done, and one day, when Grant comes here, I’ll be, like: ‘I made that.’

“I can’t wait till that happens.”