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By ALAN HOSKINS, Kansan Contributor

Mattie Oakman’s 30-year career at Kansas City Kansas Community College has come to an end – but not her career in education.

In fact, her career in education and helping others is just starting to build up momentum.

“I plan on volunteering as an advocate for misinformed victims,” says Oakman. “My goal has always been to be an advocate for persons who have been misinformed or not informed of their rights. That’s why I’m quitting work. The dollars are not everything. I believe in being in the forefront of learning and sharing knowledge and helping others is just as important to me.”

Towards that end she’s already enrolled in two KCKCC classes next spring – Crisis Counseling in the Victim Services program and Introduction to Criminal Justice.

“They’re tied hand-in-hand in people not being informed or helped,” says Oakman, who has already written a paper on Medical Neglect calling for a revamping of Medicare in a Legal Policy class.

Oakman contends that far too many people have either been misinformed or not been informed at all as to their rights as defined in written policies whether it be state and federal services, education, Social Security, free services and others. “For example, very few people know where they can get free dental work,” says Oakman. “They’re bounced around from place to place and never told there’s free dental work available.

“Neither do most people know that no matter how much money you make, you can get discounted prescriptions. If one person knows, then everyone should know.”

Oakman, 61, will enter her advocacy career armed with an impressive background resume. A self-proclaimed “professional student,” She holds a degree in Secretarial Science from Salt City Business College, an on-line degree in Philosophy and Religion from California; an Associate of Arts Degree in General Studies from KCKCC; and Life and Health Insurance license from the State of Kansas. And she’s just nine core hours away from a BA in Public Administration at the University of Kansas.

“I promised by grandmother and my dad I would not quit and I am a promise keeper,” says Oakman, who also went through Poise training in New Mexico to stay current with the College’s computer programming.

The daughter of military parents, Oakman was born in Lexington, Miss.; started grade school in Kosciusko, Miss, and graduated from Greer High School in Thomastown, Miss.

She started in college at Tougaloo Southern Christian College in Tougaloo, Miss., the only integrated college in the South at the time, but then moved with her parents to Junction City, Kan. She first attended Hutchinson Junior College before earning a Secretarial Science degree from Salt City Business College.

For 10 years she worked in banks, two years for the National Bank of Commerce in Memphis, Tenn., and eight years for United Missouri Bank of Kansas City, Mo., although living in KCK.

“I had married and had two children in different private schools and I needed to be closer to them instead of being stuck in traffic on the Lewis & Clark viaduct,” said Oakman, who decided it was time for a job change. “I was paying more for child care than I was making.”

That’s when one of KCKCC’s strangest hirings came about.

“I came to the College to get counseling on what classes I took and Don Alley suggested that I go to work at the College instead of going to school,” Oakman remembers. “They had no computers at the time, just keypunch, and I had computer experience and 10 years of banking experience.”


She started working in Academic Computing under Richard McMillin Dec. 17, 1979, then moved to Financial Aid for the last 18 years as a Technical Assistant Awarding Specialist where she certified loans and notified recipients of their loans and federal grants.

Oakman’s two children still live in Kansas City. Her son, Eric Oakman, is the general manager of a Mr. Goodscents in Lenexa while daughter Valereia Henderson is an on-line student at Concord Law School in California where she scored a perfect score on her entrance exam.

“I’m a Henderson and the Henderson has a legacy for being involved in education,” said Oakman. “One of the 12 plaintiff families in Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education was a Henderson. My father, Sam, owned all the sanitation trucks when the city of Memphis wouldn’t pay the sanitation workers and he shut them down in one of the largest strikes ever in the U.S. And a street has been named here in KCK for my cousin, I.H. Henderson.”

In addition to her advocacy volunteering, Oakman hopes to do some traveling.

“Most of my time is spent working and going to school so I’m going to do some traveling,” says Oakman, who works Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at the J.C. Penney store at Oak Park Mall. “I’ve been south, north and west but never to the east coast so I want to go there and I want to go to Hawaii and go back to England.

“Coming to the College was a great move. It not only helped me but helped others along the way. I enjoyed working here but I think I’ll enjoy not working even more.”