Vanessa Jackson is from Whiteville, North Carolina and she met her husband, Jonathan Jackson of Pickerington, nine years ago on a dating website.
The two share a sense of humor as well as a willingness to take on challenges and continuously reinvent themselves. They fell in love quickly despite the more than nine-hour drive between them.
“There’s never been much to disagree about,” Vanessa says. “Once in a lifetime, you meet that person that’s your soulmate.”
Maisie Fitzmaurice
By the time Vanessa made the journey north to meet Jonathan in person, she was already looking for jobs in town, hoping to move in with him.
The second time she flew to Columbus, she encountered delays and conflicts due to weather, but when she finally arrived, Jonathan knelt on one knee and proposed to her at the airport. Through the stress and exhaustion from her travels she excitedly said, “yes.”
If there’s one thing that makes this Pickerington pair a power couple it’s their shared dedication to pursuing higher education. And, while Vanessa and Jonathan both hold multiple degrees, their journeys to get them differ.
Worlds apart
Jonathan was born and raised in Columbus. He dropped out of high school at 16 and immediately went on to receive his GED. Soon after, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in history from The Ohio State University and graduated in less than four years.
He then earned his Juris Doctor degree (JD) from Capital University and passed the Ohio bar exam to become a lawyer, all while working 35 hours or more per week to pay tuition.
“(My mom) would repeatedly tell me, from the age of 10, ‘I either want a doctor or a lawyer in the family,’” Jonathan says. “Well, when my brother was born, his interests were dinosaurs and race cars, so it was obvious that he was never going to be a physician or an attorney so that only left me.
“I was able to schedule classes so that I was done by 11 in the morning,” Jonathan says. “I would go into work, work noon to six, Monday through Friday, and then work seven o’clock till noon on Saturday…when I transferred to Capital, same thing. It was 300 pages a week per class, and I was carrying four classes at night, and it’s like, ‘How do you read 1,200 pages even if you had a whole month to do it?’ But somehow you do it.”
Because of his packed schedule and need for money, Jonathan had to make sacrifices including being removed from his church’s chapel choir group and missing the group’s Europe trip.
Vanessa’s early adult years were very different.
She became pregnant with her first child at 17 and dropped out of high school. She was living in her beloved North Carolina hometown where the poverty rate was, and still is, higher than the national average at an estimated 20 percent.
Job opportunities were scarce but she started working right away to support her family, first on a tobacco farm, then at grocery stores and a sawmill.
Eventually, she got a job with the local county government. While there, Vanessa worked her way up into administrative roles, all while raising her four children.
Vanessa always knew she wanted to get a college degree at some point, and once her children were a little older, she enrolled in nursing classes at her local community college in 2008.
Unfortunately, Vanessa had to drop out in 2011 to work two jobs when her then-husband had health complications that made him unable to work.
Meanwhile, Jonathan had moved to South Carolina after college and practiced law for a decade before deciding to switch courses. He began student teaching and later worked with computers and networking.
He and his ex-wife raised five children, and when his parents became ill, he moved back to central Ohio.
Never giving up
By 2020, Vanessa’s children were now adults and she once again looked at her education options. She found a good fit at the University of Mount Olive where she could continue to work full time while taking classes online.
Luckily, prior decades of work experience gave her an advantage when understanding business concepts.
“When you have worked your way up through a corporate structure to where she is, that (helps) tremendously,” Jonathan says. “Some of the stuff she was supposed to be studying, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve done that.’ One of her assignments was to write a business plan for a company that’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been there and done that already.’”
That’s not to say that Vanessa’s time in school was easy. Working full-time and going to school at night is extremely taxing, and something Jonathan saw her struggle with firsthand.
“She just worked a 10-hour shift, and it’s like, ‘I’m so done. I just want to drink wine and watch TV.’ But you do what you have to if you really want to accomplish what you’re looking to accomplish,” Jonathan says.
In 2021, Vanessa received a dual bachelor’s degree in business administration and healthcare management before enrolling in the university’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. She completed her degree requirements in August and will attend graduation in December.
“I’m the first one of my mother’s children to graduate from college,” she says. “There are three of us and I’m the first one that has a college degree. She actually got to go watch me walk (at graduation) with my bachelor’s degree. Hopefully, she’ll come and watch me in December for my master’s too.”
Future ahead
Jonathan is impressed and very proud of his wife.
“It’s hard enough when you're 18 years old and you’re going to college to actually stay focused and your brain is working its best at 18 to 25,” he says. “After that, it begins to get little holes like baby Swiss cheese, and then, those holes get bigger and bigger and bigger to where it’s more difficult to stay focused on anything, so for her to go back later in life and still be able to get through, that’s the true accomplishment.”
Vanessa says her relationship with Jonathan helped her stay focused and motivated to accomplish this feat.
“Anytime I got frustrated or aggravated and said, ‘I’m done, I can’t do this,’ he would be like, ‘Yes you can, just calm down. What can I help you with?’” Vanessa says. “He was always walking me off the ledge several times. I would not be where I am if it wasn’t for him.”
Vanessa and Jonathan have been happily married for eight years and live in Pickerington.
Jonathan is the president of Ohio State’s Fairfield County Alumni Club and had his first book, Return to Brickendon Manor, published in 1994. He continues to work full-time as a writer focusing on historical novels and monographs.
For Vanessa, the world is her oyster. With her MBA in hand, she hopes to begin a career in healthcare administration in the near future.
Fun Fact: The couple collectively has nine adult children, 21 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Maisie Fitzmaurice is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at mfitzmaurice@cityscenemediagroup.com.
