THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 9, 1995 TAG: 9505090260
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
When she was a child, Natina Cochelle Prince's peers teased her about losing her hair. The chemotherapy treatments she was receiving to combat leukemia caused her to go almost bald.
Years later, still undergoing treatments at a Norfolk children's hospital, she got to rib boxing champion George Foreman about his bald head.
Prince's upbeat attitude and determination to beat the cancer she'd lived with since she was 4 years old won her admiration from just about everyone who knew, or knew of, her.
But there was one thing that Tina Prince didn't get to do before she died April 1 at age 21. The Norfolk native never received the College of the Albemarle diploma for which she had studied so diligently.
Until Monday.
During the Elizabeth City community college's annual Scholarships and Awards Ceremony, Prince was given a posthumous honorary degree. The goal she worked hardest to accomplish in life finally was accomplished after her death.
``She had a burning desire for knowledge, and she made obtaining her degree a major goal in her life,'' said Dr. Larry Donnithorne, president of the college, before presenting a diploma to Prince's mother, Deborah Johnson.
Johnson, also a COA student, sniffed back tears as she accepted the award for her daughter. More than 250 people attended the ceremony at the COA Auditorium.
After quietly thanking Donnithorne, Johnson walked off the stage, dabbing her eye with a tissue, and returned to sit with other family members.
``She wants Tina to be remembered, and we want to remember Tina,'' said Bob Melvin, the college counselor who initiated the honorary degree.
The hourlong program, which recognized more than 100 students for their academic accomplishments during the 1994-95 school year, was dedicated to Prince.
``She was such an inspiration to all the students here,'' Melvin said last week in his campus office.
Prince had come a long way, even before she began studying for a job in medical office technology at COA.
The year before she was scheduled to enter kindergarten, she developed blisters on her hand and a cough that prompted a visit to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk.
Doctors diagnosed her as having acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a common but incurable disease.Prince began receiving chemotherapy in 1978 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Even after she went into remission, Prince was required to continue the chemotherapy.
At one point early in her daughter's life, Johnson waged a highly publicized legal battle with Maryland health officials over an alternative treatment to the chemicals, which she said caused her child to lose her hair, drop weight and develop sores in her mouth.
Prince eventually continued with the conventional drug therapy. When she'd suffer a relapse, she'd have to miss school - sometimes for months at a time.
But friends say her strong desire to learn and to be as close to a typical college student as possible helped her survive leukemia for as long as she did. She still had several COA classes to complete when she died last month.
Her honorary associate's degree in applied science was given, as the document reads, ``on recommendation of the faculty and staff, by virtue of her unremitting dedication, perseverance and steadfast commitment to education and the attainment of a degree.''
``Tina was the kind of young lady where it didn't matter how much she was hurting. Her goal was to get her degree,'' Melvin said.
``You'd see Tina and the pain she was in, and she still wanted to pursue her degree,'' he said. ``She was just a good role model and an excellent student for the other students to emulate.'' ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTOs
Natina Cochelle Prince, left, and her mother, Deborah Johnson, in
1981. Prince, who had leukemia, died April 1 at age 21.
Natina in 1994 photo
by CNB