Veteran Joseph Gonzalez, 39, to be a Suffolk County Community College commencement speaker
Joseph Gonzalez poses for a photo during commencement practice at Suffolk Community College on Wednesday. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
Joseph Gonzalez was in his mid-30s when he decided to return to college. He had earned his GED after dropping out of Brentwood High School years ago and he had served in two branches of the military.
Suffolk County Community College is where he excelled. He won a number of national awards, is graduating with a 4.0 grade-point average and has been accepted by two Ivy League schools — Columbia University and Princeton, which offered him a full scholarship.
“I am almost like. I am going to wake up and I’m dreaming,” said Gonzalez, 39, of West Babylon. “It’s just hard to put into words.”
Gonzalez, a liberal arts-history major, will serve as commencement speaker for first of two ceremonies at the SCCC’s Michael J. Grant Campus in Brentwood Thursday. He hasn’t yet decided on whether to accept admission to Columbia or Princeton and said that if Suffolk offered a bachelor’s degree, he’d stay there instead.
He said he had a challenging childhood with a mother who struggled with alcohol and drug addiction and a family that had a hard time making ends meet. His father worked as a cabdriver at the Babylon railroad station when he was younger, he said. Both his parents are deceased.
As a student at Brentwood High School, he often had conflicts with fellow students and ended up not graduating.
“I was an angry young man. I'm not proud of that,” he said. “And I was very bitter about my position. I was joked on for being poor.”
He worked odd jobs. One time he worked collecting shopping carts for the local supermarket.
He joined the U.S. Marine Corps and did two tours in Iraq. After four years with the Marines, he returned to civilian life, but said he had a hard time finding a job during the 2008 recession and he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
There he found himself back as a student learning Arabic through a program at North Carolina State University while at Fort Bragg. In the Army, he served as a trainer in Jordan. He figured that if he could handle the classwork then, he could do it now. He was injured in 2015 and medically retired from the Army. He decided during the COVID-19 pandemic to go back to school and enrolled in Suffolk two years ago.
He wanted to major in history.
“The first thing was I didn't want to be picked out as the old guy,” he said. “Community college is great because there is someone always older than you. It was great. Everyone accepted me as a fellow student.”
The GI Bill covered the cost of his education and he had assistance from the school’s Veterans Resource Center.
“So I first met Joseph over two years ago. I would say about him having served in not one but two branches of the military he truly displays all the characteristics you would expect of a military veteran — not only hard work but determination, perseverance and tenacity,” said Shannon O'Neill, the school's director of veteran services. “In addition to that he is extremely smart. He has had to overcome so many obstacles to get to where he is today and we are extremely proud of him.”
He is graduating Thursday with an associate degree. By the time he was eligible to graduate, Gonzalez had racked up a number of awards and honors. He hopes to be a college professor.
He was one of only 60 community college students nationwide selected to receive the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship. He was named New York State’s 2024 New Century Transfer Scholar. He held key leadership positions at the college, including president of Student Veterans of America, Honors Club president, and History Club vice president.
In his message to graduates at the morning commencement Thursday, he plans to say that “having a Suffolk degree, it means you are prepared not only to go out into a competitive world but to be successful in it. Let's graduate and face that world together.”
Joie Tyrrell is a Long Island native and covers education for Newsday, where she has worked since 1998.
