Student builds nest on Osprey grounds

By Ace Stryker
News Editor

Lindsay Wilkes spent her senior year of high school like a lot of the other kids in her class. She studied hard, worked part-time and shot pool with her friends on the weekends. Like a lot of the other kids, perhaps, except she was homeless through almost all of it.

Wilkes is a freshman at the University of North Florida this summer. She lives in the dorms now and plans to study to become a veterinarian. But this time last year, she said, she’d never have imagined ending up where she is now.

Wilkes said the trouble in her life started about midway through her junior year at Englewood High School when she, her father and her brother found themselves moving around to different friends’ houses and apartments while searching for a steady source of income. In the summer of 2005, her father moved up to South Carolina to deal with personal issues and Wilkes elected to stay behind and finish school in Jacksonville.

“The whole reason I stayed down here is because I didn’t want to move around as much,” Wilkes said.

However, the next year turned out to be a roller coaster ride of transience among her friends’ houses and ultimately with several people she “knew absolutely nothing about,” relying usually on each host’s good will for only a few weeks before moving on.

Throughout the ordeal, Wilkes continued to attend school and work 30 hours a week at a local Golden Corral. She walked to most places she needed to be, because she didn’t have a car. Most people at school didn’t know anything about her situation, she said, because she preferred to confide in only a few close friends.

The last stop on Wilkes’ break-neck tour of Jacksonville’s living accommodations was the home of her boyfriend, Matt Stumph. Before the series of events that would bring her to UNF, she stayed there for about six months with Stumph and his family.

It was Matt Stumph’s mother, Mary Stumph, who first suggested to Wilkes that she consider applying to college after highschool. Before that, Wilkes said, she never gave much serious thought to the notion, despite her exceptionally high 3.93 graduating GPA.

“My guidance counselor never helped me with filling out college applications,” Wilkes said. But Mary Stumph, who works as a legal assistant in the Office of the General Counselor at UNF, took it upon herself to plead Wilkes’ case to John Yancey, an employee in UNF’s Office of Admissions.

Together, Yancey and the Stumphs made it a personal quest to see the newly-aspiring university student through the application process, Wilkes said. They helped her fill out all the necessary forms and apply for every scholarship they could find, she added. The result was overwhelming success.

“For my freshman year I’ve got everything covered,” Wilkes said. She now has a letter of admission, several scholarships to pay every school-related expense for the year, a job in the campus bookstore and a dorm to call home - although she said she still tries to spend at least one night a week at the Stumphs’.

“She’s a really good mom,” Wilkes said of Mary Stumph. Her relationship with Matt Stumph continues to thrive as well, she added.

When she looks back on everything she’s been through in the past year, Wilkes said she never really feels sorry for herself or wishes that things would’ve turned out differently.

She links her decision to stay in Florida and take her chances on a place to live directly to the opportunities that granted her a shot at a college education.

“I’m extremely excited,” Wilkes said. “It was all worth it.”