Marsha Chaffin’s nursing school diploma is much more than a piece of paper noting academic achievement.

It is a symbol of survival and perseverance in the face of family tragedy. It is a token of her refusal to give up after economic setbacks took a stable job away. And it is a reminder of all the people who gave her the strength and encouragement to go on and meet her goals.

Chaffin’s path to becoming a nurse after being laid off from her longtime job at American National Rubber was not an easy one, but the load was lightened considerably by help she received from the Northeast Kentucky Community Action Agency (NKCAA).

Chaffin, 47, is a lifelong Fallsburg resident.

“I always wanted to be a nurse when I was growing up but I never really got the opportunity to do something about it,” she said.

Instead, she got married just after high school and had three children. She worked various jobs that ended up having little long-term potential.

But the job she found after American National Rubber came to Louisa, manufacturing rubber components for Ford Motor Company, seemed like one she would stick with because of the good pay and working conditions.

“It was a great job,” she said.

Unfortunately, after she had worked there for eight years, the company closed down in early 2006 and dozens of jobs, including Chaffin’s, were outsourced elsewhere.

“It was devastating to everybody. You’ve got a good job and then all of a sudden you don’t have a good job anymore. It hurt,” she said.

Almost before the shock had set in, however, NKCAA’s rapid response team was on the scene.

The NKCAA office in Louisa is an access point for the JobSight network. JobSight is a collaborative partnership of workforce and training agencies administered by the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP). EKCEP—a Hazard-based nonprofit agency—administers Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and other workforce development programs in 23 eastern Kentucky counties.

NKCAA held an assembly for the workers and told them about Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs they were eligible for because of their status as dislocated workers. One of these was money for retraining, and Chaffin decided that with WIA help she could finally go back to school and become a nurse.

Chaffin went to the NKCAA office in Louisa and filled out a JobFit, JobSight’s online skills assessment. The WIA staff worked quickly and Chaffin, who was laid off in February, was taking general education classes that would count toward her nursing degree in March.

She had no sooner started studying when family tragedy struck. Three weeks after her classes at Ashland Community and Technical College began her daughter, 26-year-old Stacy Chaffin, was killed in a car accident.

Chaffin had lost a daughter and now had to raise her two young grandsons, Morgan and Jayden. She thought she would give up nursing, but her instructors and the WIA staff refused to let her quit.

Chaffin said she questioned how they could make her come back this soon, but now sees that moving forward and continuing to work toward her goal instead of dwelling on the tragedy was the best thing.

“It saved my life,” she said. “I don’t know that I would have been here otherwise. It would have been hard just to go on,” she said.

Chaffin continued in the nursing program, which was hard work but also fascinating. She loved studying the math and science and said that all of her instructors were “wonderful.”

She also had support from other women who had also been laid off from American National Rubber and were retraining as nurses. They formed a study group and went to nursing classes together.

Bonnie Conn, her current WIA career advisor, and other WIA staff were also a big help in getting her through those trying times, Chaffin said..

“She encouraged me every time I came in here. When I was down she picked me back up,” she said.

The need to take care of and the love and support she got from Morgan and Jayden also gave her the strength she needed to go on, she said.

But before she could finish the nursing program there would be one more setback. Last July her mother, Betty Vanhorn, died of uterine cancer at 69, but she kept going and graduated in December.

“It was very emotional,” she said. She was surrounded by family and friends at the ceremony, but she was also sure that her mother and daughter would have been proud of what she had accomplished.

After taking two months to “destress,” Chaffin passed her nursing board exam and got a job working as a Registered Nurse in the medical/surgery unit at Three Rivers Medical Center in Louisa in March.

She says that she would tell other people who want to help improve their lives to take advantage of the services WIA offers.

“Don’t hesitate, just do it. If I can do it, anyone can,” Chaffin said.

 

For more information on Workforce Investment Act services available in Carter, Elliot and Lawrence counties, contact Bonnie Conn at 606-638-4949.