After a 'magical' journey, mother and son walked across a graduation stage with MBAs
As a student starting Davidson Elementary School in Detroit during an era in the late 1960s when good old-fashioned foot power was the way most students traveled to school, LaCynthia Murray Davis received some extra help crossing the street each day from her mom, Pearl L. Murray, a devoted school crossing guard.
Fast-forward several decades and Murray Davis was ready to navigate a new educational journey. And, true to her roots, she decided to make it a family affair.
In 2023, Murray Davis asked her son, Travis LaVelle Murray, to enroll with her in one of the MBA programs offered by Cleary University.
"I thought Travis should continue his education anyway — I didn't want him to wait as long as I had. And then I thought it would be great for us to get our MBAs together," the 61-year-old Murray Davis explained. "So I just said to Travis: 'Why don't you take this journey with me?' And he said: 'OK, Mom.' "
For Murray Davis, the first step of that MBA journey began when she resumed her college education, which had been put on hold for about 40 years, including the years she spent raising and providing for her son. Returning to college in January 2023 led to Murray Davis earning a bachelor's degree in business administration from Cleary University. And it was during that time that the idea of adding one more degree to her resume crept into her mind.
"I raised Travis and did everything I could for him, and I had taken care of my parents while they were with us. Everyone else around me who I cared about seemed to be good, too, so it just seemed like the right time to finally go back to school, which is something I had wanted to do for a long time," said Murray Davis, who is a CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) specialist at Comerica Bank, where she is approaching her 36-year anniversary. "I was asked (while scheduling classes to wrap up her bachelor's degree) if I wanted to continue on for my master's and I sort of groaned at first. But then I was told that some of the classes that I was about to take also would help me get my master's sooner, and since I would already have a head start, I felt that I may as well keep going."
In moving forward in partnership with her son, as two students in pursuit of graduate degrees through courses offered online, Murray Davis realized that she and her son were now equals — in an academic sense. Still, that did not mean that Murray Davis was prepared to abandon her motherly instincts. This was especially true when it came to stressing the importance of completing homework, which is something Murray Davis had done at every stage of her son's education, including his high school days at University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy (Class of 2016), and even when he left home to attend Michigan State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in wildlife biology.
LaCynthia Murray Davis has always been right by the side of her son Travis, including his 2016 senior prom night when he attended University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy.
“When Travis got to U of D and told me he wanted to play football, I was concerned about him being able to keep his grades up, and my mother said: ‘Let that boy play football.’ And that turned out to be a blessing because Travis understood that in order for him to play he had to get his homework done,” Murray Davis recalled, while speaking during the evening of May 6. “Even with the MBA courses we took together, I would say, ‘Travis, you know the assignment is due on Monday.’
“It would be an assignment that I had been working on for two or three days, and Travis could get started on a Sunday and complete it in two to three hours. That just goes to show you the difference between his youthful mind and my older mind.”
As it turns out, both minds were up to the test during the duration of their MBA courses. And that fact was on display Saturday, May 3, when mother and son each received their MBAs from Cleary University during a commencement ceremony at the George Gervin GameAbove Center on the campus of Eastern Michigan University.
For Murray Davis — who, with a little help from her son, in a Financial Viability class, graduated summa cum laude — it was the best pre-Mother’s Day present that she ever could have hoped to receive.
“The whole experience was magical, awesome, unbelievable, something that I can’t put into words,” Murray Davis rattled off, as she attempted to describe how she felt walking across the graduation stage directly behind her dear friend and Comerica Bank colleague E. Geneise Edwards — whom Murray Davis also invited to take the MBA journey with her — and directly in front of her son. “It was an honor to walk across that stage with my son. What just happened was nothing but the Lord. Nothing but God. I give Him all the honor and praise.”
Around lunchtime on May 8, Travis Murray was more than happy to sing his mom's praises because she has so often made a habit of helping her son achieve success over his 26 years of living.
“My mom is everything to me,’” Murray said while taking a quick break from his work as an operations coordinator for FORCE (Faithfully Organizing for Community Empowerment) Detroit, a Community Violence Intervention nonprofit organization “dedicated to building a safer, freer Detroit,” which Murray joined in January. “When I was growing up, my mom was at every event, every graduation, so having this opportunity to graduate with her and to take a picture together with the university president, is really surreal.”
Murray went on to explain that his appreciation for his mom has only grown as he has viewed her deeds with more mature eyes. He pointed to a sacred retreat he participated in as a senior at University of Detroit Jesuit High School where secrets were revealed.
“My mom wrote me a letter that I read at the retreat where she told me how much she loved me, and she also told me that she almost died when she gave birth to me,” revealed Murray, who also credits his mom for instilling in him the inner strength to pursue an undergraduate major at Michigan State that honored his love for animals, regardless of what others may think or expect of him. “I really didn’t realize just how much she has done for me until I got older. As a single mom, she had to do a lot of things by herself, but she still got everything done.”
That ability to get “everything done” evidently is a superpower passed down in Murray’s family, because his mother says that her late parents provided a model that she has always tried to follow. For example, the same Pearl Murray — Travis Murray’s grandmother — who became a neighborhood school crossing guard the year her daughter started school at Davidson, is the same person who retired from a “good” job working for Chrysler to babysit Travis after he was born. The babysitting gig was convenient since Travis and his mom lived next door to her home on Yonka Street. And Pearl Murray’s husband, Willie J. Murray, who was a proud General Motors autoworker, matched his wife’s love for their grandson in other ways.
"It took a village to raise Travis," says LaCynthia Murray Davis, and two of the most important members of her village were her father, the late Willie J. Murray, far left, and her mother, the late Pearl L. Murray, far right. In addition to teaching a young Travis Murray how to dress for success, Travis inherited a love of sports from his grandmother and his grandfather passed along his love for yard work, fishing and outdoor grilling.
“I know Mom and Dad were looking down from Heaven at us during the graduation ceremony” Murray Davis, the loving wife of Kenneth Davis, said about her parents, who also gave their full support to her siblings — Valencia Murray McCarroll, Aileen Murray, Carolyn Clemons and the late Darnell and Carlton Murray. “My parents were huge supporters of everything that Travis was involved in growing up. My dad and my pastor (the Rev. Marvin Youmans, pastor of Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church) also were the main male role models that my son saw.”
Through all of the nurturing Travis Murray received growing up, he picked up one specific skill from his grandfather — grilling — that promises to make this Mother’s Day even more special for his mom.
“My mom loves for me to grill for her, so I think I will book her a massage and grill some food for her,” said Murray, who proudly carries a very elaborate tattoo on his arm which honors the “three moms of his life,” his mother, grandmother and his Auntie Ida Wright. “She really likes wings. And I might also do some asparagus, lamb chops, corn, and probably steak, too. My mom loves to help people, so I like it when she lets me do some stuff for her.
“Really everything I do now, I do for her.”
On Mother's Day, LaCynthia Murray Davis, right, will think often about her mom, the late Pearl L. Murray, who protected and nurtured her daughter as a child, and then inspired LaCynthia, a 1981 graduate of Pershing High School, to strive for excellence, which she has continued to do, as witnessed by the MBA LaCynthia recently received from Cleary University.
Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott's stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Please help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: After a 'magical' journey, mother and son walked across a graduation stage with MBAs
