Graduation for Ethiopian Immigrant Is a Story of Survival and Success

Redeat Bayleyegn, a deeply reverent Ethiopian who just a few years ago wondered if he would have a future at all, graduated Saturday from Loyola Marymount University, fully aware of what he represents:

He is an immigrant who came to this country looking for a way to make something of himself. He is an African looking for ways to better his homeland. He is the son of parents who fought and scraped and gave everything they had so that his life could be better. And he is 23, with every possibility open to him.

It could be that Bayleyegn is no different from thousands of students, immigrants and natives, who have vaulted over seemingly impassible obstacles to march this spring to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

But his story of survival and success, of service and of selflessness, is something more than a personal happy ending. Bayleyegn expects to take his American education back to some small corner of Ethiopia. What he leaves behind, unexpectedly, is a bit of Ethiopia in a small corner of America.

“If I didn’t have hope or faith, I wouldn’t be here,” he said shyly, sitting on a cafe terrace at the Westchester campus, a hand self-consciously draped over his stylish goatee. “I have big optimism. That comes with hope.”

The first in his family to go to college, Bayleyegn now dreams about law school. He wants to go back to Ethiopia to be an activist and a teacher, to help people.

Members of his university community say it is a mission Bayleyegn has already begun to achieve.

From the time he moved to Los Angeles, he volunteered for the American Cancer Society and the Red Cross. On campus, he coordinated the mentorship program for the Office of Black Student Services.

“There’s a lot I learned from him,” said Professor Joseph Jabbra, Loyola’s academic vice president. “He reminds us to care about others. If you care about people, he says, then a lot of other issues fall by the wayside.”

Bayleyegn was born the year an army coup brought Communists to power in Ethiopia. His earliest memories are of gunfire in the streets outside his Addis Ababa home.

The only life he knew was dangerous. Say the wrong thing and get arrested. Walk down the wrong street and get killed. Come of age and get drafted to fight in the civil war.

Bayleyegn’s mother left him and his six siblings when he was 6. In need of medical care that she could not receive at home, she went to join relatives in Los Angeles.

His father did the best he could. The family’s new house was confiscated by the government, so he and the children made do with their old, tiny home. His father still had his shoe store and some of the children were able to stay in school.

By the time Bayleyegn was 16, his mother had become just a voice on the telephone. When he was ordered to register for the army, his father sent him and the remaining siblings to join their mother.

Enrolling as a junior at Westchester High School was fraught with conflicting emotions. Learning English was tough. Trying to fit in with the other students was tougher. Bayleyegn’s classmates picked a fight with him his first day in P.E. class. They laughed at him when he told the teacher he didn’t know how to play baseball. When he got a base hit, they accused him of lying about his expertise. A scuffle ensued, and Bayleyegn was suspended from school.

But his older brothers and mother worked so that he could attend school and become somebody. And he wasn’t about to take that gift for granted.

Every day, as he rode the bus to school, he stared at the brilliant white buildings of Loyola Marymount. But with a combined SAT score that didn’t break 600, his dreams of attending the school on the hill seemed hopeless.

So Bayleyegn entered Cal State Northridge on probationary status, pulled a 3.0 grade point average for two years and won reconsideration from Loyola. He was finally accepted to the school in 1995.

At Saturday’s graduation, Bayleyegn had only one regret. Part of him still hoped, when he scanned the crowd for the beaming faces of his mother, his brothers and other relatives, that he would see his father. His father, still in Ethiopia, became ill and died the year Bayleyegn entered Loyola.

When the young man thinks of his father, he thinks of home in Ethiopia, and feels conflicted.

“I love America. It provided me with everything I have,” he said. “But I still miss my home.”