Couple nears end of long road to to get college degrees at SEMO

It seems funny now given what they have gone through to get to today, but Todd and Melissa Cruts first met at a Southeast Missouri State University student production of "You Can't Take It With You."

They weren't the indomitable Crutses back then, the super couple who seemingly could leap any challenge in a single bound on their road to higher education.

For Todd, 37, it was just about love at first sight that Nov. 5, 1992. He remembers it well. He says he was there to meet another girl who was in the play.

"I ended up leaving with my wife," he said. Melissa would be his wife, anyway, less than a year later.

Melissa, 38, remembers instantly liking this "joker who keeps you laughing," but the love part took a little bit longer.

Whatever it was, it worked. Some 17 years later, through financial struggles and stressful days, Todd and Melissa say their relationship is stronger than ever -- strengthened, they say, by their shared drive and purpose.

On Saturday, this couple will walk down the commencement aisle together, back where they met, at Southeast Missouri State University. He'll receive his bachelor of science in human resources management, she, her master of arts in communication disorders.

They say it's difficult to express the kind of individual and shared satisfaction they'll feel on graduation day after walking a long road -- together -- in pursuit of their degrees.

"You go through life a lot of times feeling like you're getting beat up," Todd said. "It's nice to stand up and be able to look back and observe what you've gone through. Now we can see what we've accomplished."

The Crutses say they've always placed a premium on higher education. They've had to make plenty of sacrifices along the way.

Todd served a short stint in Army intelligence in the early 1990s in Arizona. Melissa took a class here and there in pursuit of a psychology degree.

They moved back to Southeast Missouri in the mid-1990s. He worked in a chicken processing plant, a restaurant and more than a few odd jobs to send her through college. They struggled to make ends meet.

"I remember him working at the factory and some of the other jobs," Melissa said. "He's done a lot of that, a lot of menial jobs that didn't pay that great, but it paid the bills at the time. He never gave up on bettering us and our situation."

Melissa earned bachelor's degrees in psychology and communication disorders, and eventually Todd went back to school to chase his human resources degree. He was motivated by what he saw in the places he worked, some awful places, he said, where employees needed prescription medication just to survive their work day. He wanted to do something that would allow him to make a better workplace, like the companies that perpetually earn the status of the best places to work.

The couple, Todd said, reached a point where they decided they were "all in" and went after their dreams with everything they had.

"If you find something you are happy and satisfied with, where you can make a comfortable living, it doesn't matter what the cost is," he said. They've earned excellent grades, both are involved in several campus and professional organizations and they've done much to bolster their resumes.

"We don't like to do anything halfway in our house," Todd said.

The pursuit of dreams is exhausting, however. Melissa said there were times she and her husband questioned their sanity.

"We definitely had to weather some ups and downs and really pull together," she said. "We really had to be careful about not letting that stress and things come between us.

"Being a military family really set us up for this situation," she said. "You learn coping skills, and I think it helped us and set us up for this journey."

And they did it all together. They are quick to point out the abundant support they received from family and friends along the way, not to mention a few inspiring professors.

As for their relationship, Todd said he and his wife have become more dependent on each other. But they admit to looking forward to the more relaxed pace of postcollege life -- and perhaps one of those all-too-rare date nights.

"I think we're going through the same process parents go through when a child moves out," Todd said. "You look forward to that personal time."

The journey, they say, built a trust that many will never know and a resolve that only struggle can define.

"I don't think either one of us had to doubt whether we could make it," Todd said. "We knew we could get through this, having each other's back."

mkittle@semissourian.com

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