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In the summer of 1992 when Billi Ewing of Dayton was just 15 years old, she discovered she was pregnant and, like most young girls at the time, was scared to death.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was at camp, and I threw up and had to come home,” Ewing said. “My mom was amazing, and we grew up watching ‘The Cosby Show,’ so I knew I wanted to have three or four kids, but I was totally kicked back on my heels to find out I was pregnant at 15.”
So was Ewing’s mom, Daria Dillard Stone, who at the time was well known in Dayton as the executive secretary to the CEO at the Dayton Urban League. But Ewing was not the “typical” pregnant teen, and the Dayton Daily News ended up writing two stories about her, chronicling the honor student’s journey from the birth of her daughter, Tobi De’Ja Nicol Ewing, on Dec. 20, 1992, to Billi Ewing’s graduation with honors from Meadowdale High School in June 1995.
And in May of this year, De’Ja, the name she mostly uses with family, graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., an Ivy League liberal arts school, where she received a host of honors and awards. De’Ja has landed a job in New York City working for Ralph Lauren.
“My daughter and I are both products of Dayton Public Schools,” Ewing said. “I am the person I am today because of a teacher that inspired me, because of the support of my family and because of my own determination.”
Ewing admits that her path as a single mother wasn’t always an easy one. She finished high school while her daughter went to a child care center across the street from the Urban League offices on Salem Avenue.
“It was hard, and there were sleepless nights,” Ewing said. “I had homework, and she needed to eat, or she wanted to play. I was learning time management and balancing my day and getting my school work done and later going to work and trying to have time left for her, too.”
And through it all, she had her family and De’Ja’s father and her now husband, Toby, by her side every step of the way. “Her dad was there, and his family was there, so when I did need a break or I had exams I would have the whole family on both sides to help,” Ewing said. “It’s because of them this journey was made 100 percent manageable.”
The journey included college at Wright State University in Fairborn, where Ewing said she struggled at first. “I stumbled during my second year at Wright State because it was a little bit too much for me,” she said. “It took me five years to complete my degree (in communications studies), but I worked for the paper and the radio station and the union activities board all the way through college.”
Ewing also moved on campus to an apartment with her daughter and somehow was able to fit school, work and time with her daughter all in to her busy schedule. She credits mentors and internships at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base with contributing to her success.
After graduating from college in 2000, she married her daughter’s father, then took a job with Mead Paper in Dayton. “Toby has been there for me from Day 1,” she said. “We just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary.”
De’Ja attended Valerie and eventually graduated from Stivers School for the Arts. “It was at Stivers where she really came into who she was, I think,” Ewing said. “She is creative, funny and outgoing. She was always very avant-garde, and she set her own trends and she loved fashion. Her school counselor submitted her name to Skidmore College, and they accepted her with a full scholarship.”
The extended family recently celebrated De’Ja’s college graduation and sent the next generation off to work, knowing the future looks bright for her.
“I’m just in an introspective period of my life,” Ewing said. “It dawned on me that no one knew 15 years ago that this was going to happen today to this little girl in the paper. When you give a person hope, faith, love and support, this is how it turns out.”
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