Mahieu followed a dream of being a nurse. Then it led to the classroom.
By CADE KENNEDY, Sports Editor
A Ford F-250 Super Duty 4×4 pickup cruises around Alva every single morning.
The truck has enough sound in it to fill an entire campus. The sound is coming from one of three places: the two boys in the back, Logan and Grady, the mother taking them to school or the radio blasting either country or rock-and-roll.
It’s background noise for their conversation.
After the kids are dropped off at school, the truck loses some of its sound. Now it is just Mahieu and the radio on the way to work.
As she enters Carter Hall on Northwestern’s campus, where she’s worked for 23 years, she is met with the usual sound of silence. She then walks down the hall into Room 101 and gets ready for a day of teaching.
This is not the path Dr. Jennifer Mahieu thought she would take in life. But she’s learned that nothing is predictable.
“I did not think that I would get into education,” Mahieu said. “It was never on my radar.”
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Mahieu is an associate professor of nursing at Northwestern, and she’s a student success advisor. She knew she wanted to be a nurse from the time she graduated from Aline-Cleo High School. She attended Northwestern for a year and then switched to Northwest Technology Center in Alva.
After that, she worked at front offices in medical clinics across northwest Oklahoma, but she always found herself doing the same thing: sneaking off to see what the nurses were doing.
She decided to come back home and return to college at Northwestern, working toward her bachelor’s degree in nursing. She had put in her application for the nursing program, and the 23-year-old was getting ready to go for a drive.
But on that day in 1992, she was injured in a car accident and suffered life-threating injuries that still affect her.
“I remember thinking, ‘Why me?’” Mahieu said. “’What did I do to deserve this?’”
Mahieu was able to stay positive during the recovery process following the accident, said Mistie Kline, a psychology professor at Northwestern and one of Mahieu’s friends.
“Some people might have been disheartened and down about an accident like that and never go back to the person that they once were, but Jennifer has a motivation that I admire,” Kline said. “Jennifer is one of those people that seems to come out the other end better than she was before.”
Mahieu went back to school after months of recovery and was able to battle through her chronic pain to get her degree.
“I do believe that the accident happened for a reason,” Mahieu said. “Without faith and family support, I would have never been able to recover from it. It did help make me the person that I am today.”
CARING FOR KIDS
Mahieu is a tenderhearted person, Kline said.
“Around 15 to 16 years ago, I had struggled to have a kid, but I finally got pregnant,” Kline said. “I would go to Jennifer’s house, and she would give me shots that I needed and would check up on me and make sure that I was doing great.”
Mahieu doesn’t just have friends on campus. Her sister, Sheri Lahr, is the university registrar.
“One time, Jennifer came across a stray barn kitten that was foaming at the mouth, and against everyone’s advice, she picked up the kitten and took it to the vet on a Sunday,” Lahr said. “The vet found a sandbur lodged in its throat, and he took it out. After that, she took the kitten right back to its mother.”
Another one of Mahieu’s friends on campus is Leeta Grimsley, the assistant director of the IT department.
“Jennifer is always upbeat and has a positive attitude no matter the situation,” Grimsley said.
One of those situations was particularly stressful.
VACATION ON ICE
At the end of 2004, Grimsley and Mahieu went down to Miami to watch their favorite team, the Oklahoma Sooners, play the Trojans of USC in the Orange Bowl for the national championship. The arrived at the airport in Wichita, where they started their journey to Miami. There, they went to the Hard Rock Stadium for the Orange Bowl on January 4, 2005, to watch the Sooners play in front of a sold-out crowd of 77,912 people. The Sooners were demolished by a score of 55-19, but that was not the only problem the two faced on their trip.
An ice storm had rolled into Wichita and left it as a frozen wasteland for a few days, meaning the airport was closed.
Grimsley and Mahieu scrambled across the Miami airport as they tried to find a way back home. They eventually found a plane to Oklahoma City and decided it was their only option.
On the plane, they talked to a man who was in the same situation they were in. The man said he could drive them from Oklahoma City to Wichita, and then they could get in their car and go home. They had to put their trust in the stranger they met on the plane, and it paid off, Mahieu said. They had a safe trip up to Wichita and back to Alva.
FAMILY VALUES
Those who know Mahieu best say she cares deeply for her family. Family is important to Mahieu; she said her children are her greatest accomplishments.
When she was looking for a daycare to put her son Logan in, she interviewed the people running the daycares. She looked around at different daycares, trying to find any problems they might have.
“Jennifer is not a person to just trust anyone with her boys,” said Tammy Like, another one of Mahieu’s friends. “She is one of those moms that you wish every child had. I never had to worry about her kids.”
When Mahieu leaves Carter Hall each day to go pick up her sons, the sound slowly returns to the truck. The radio springs back to life and blasts out more music.
As her sons get back into the truck, their sound comes back as well. It is the sound of happiness, laughter and joy. As the crew rolls down the familiar road to home, the truck is just as vivacious as it was in the morning.
As the family arrives back at the house, a trio of barking dogs can be heard in the distance. In the house, the family is reunited once again with Mahieu’s husband, Mitch. Soon, it is time for the family to go to sleep.
There’ll be more sounds to hear the next day.
