LUMBERTON, North Carolina — At 72 years old, Anniatha McMillan is fulfilling her lifelong dream of getting her degree.
“Never give up, just pursue,” McMillan said in an interview with Robeson Community College. “They will look at you like you lost your mind.”
According to Robeson College, McMillan lost her husband back in 2005 in a terrible horrific accident in Onslow County that almost claimed her life as well.
“There was an explosion, and I had to be pulled out of the car. They cut the top off, somehow, I made it out alive,” McMillan told Robeson Community College.
McMillan said it was the scariest, saddest experience of her life, but told Robeson Community College that her faith in God got her through the ordeal.
She along with her sister, started what she called a Teaching and Deliverance Ministry, where people could attend church on the phone and hear God’s word.
“People criticized it,” McMillan said in the interview with Robeson. “But when COVID broke out, God began to say ‘I’m changing things, come out of the building,’ and every Sunday, we were faithful to the Lord.”
McMillan would eventually meet and then marry “a nice deacon man” from Robeson County.
The couple built a new house on the farmland her husband owned and she moved to Lumberton. McMillan then went back to school to finish her degree, one she had started so many years ago.
She started out taking developmental classes in English, and Robeson Community College said McMillan immediately flourished.
“Age is just a number, Anniatha is such a role model to the other students,” RCC instructor Angela Lamb said. “It is important to her to have completion. She’s a good writer and a good thinker… we are excited to see her move on to the next class, which will be English 111.”
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