Tameika Ragland has heard it all. The naysayers. The doubters. The expectations that tend to follow a girl who becomes a mother at 14. For years, she says, there were those who thought she wouldn't make it.
They were wrong.
On May 8, the now 50-year-old Bessemer native will walk across the Lawson State Community College commencement stage to receive her third college degree - this time in accounting. But ask her why she chose to march in this particular graduation, and she will not quickly mention accounting. She will tell you her story.
"A lot of people counted me out because I had a baby at 14," Ms. Ragland says, "but this is the third degree for me. The reason I'm marching in this graduation is because my daughter, who is now 35, is getting her degree, too. We will be right there together."
Ms. Ragland graduated from Jess Lanier High School in Bessemer in 1994. She was a young wife and mother who had already learned that life rarely waits for the right moment. After high school, she enrolled at Bessemer Tech Community College - which later merged with Lawson State - to pursue computer science. The bills and life issues came faster than the college credits. She and her husband found a place to rent and raise their small family, but the relationship fizzled, and for a brief time, things got really hard.
"I stayed in my car a few days, and I had to quit school," she says recalling how tough it was back then. "I had to work fulltime to pay bills."
Life would grow more complicated before it grew easier. In 2005, while raising two children of her own and navigating a divorce, Ms. Ragland took custody of three nephews - children of her incarcerated brother. A social worker told her it would just be for 30 days. That turned into years. Then came the phone call about another child: a premature newborn, her brother's new baby, just days old and not breathing on his own.
Officials said a custody decision had to be made immediately.
"They told me if I didn't take him as soon as he was born and off the respirator, he would be given over to the system," Ms. Ragland recalls. "I didn't want that for him, period."
She took the baby. By now, Ms. Ragland was raising six children and working two jobs. Her oldest, a pre-teen at the time, helped with the overnight shifts. Making matters even harder was one of her nephews who began showing signs of severe mental illness — hearing voices, making threats, and disrupting life at home and at his elementary school. She sought help and support, and more than a dozen medications later, the child was placed in a specialty hospital.
Through it all, Ms. Ragland kept going.
Ms. Ragland and her staff pose with youngsters during a Halloween event at KeeCare Child Development Center.
She finally made it back to Lawson State for good in 2010, this time graduating with an associate degree in child development. She'd changed her major to a choice inspired by what she saw and knew.
"Remember, I had my first kid at 14," she explains. "When the woman who owned the day care would come to the door every day, I thought it must be awesome to have a home day care. That had to be an amazing job. But nobody I knew in the daycare business had a degree or formal training. That made me want to pursue it."
Shortly after graduating, she launched KeeCare Child Development Center. What started with 12 children grew quickly to 17, then beyond. Her home-based operation no longer fit her clientele. Ever resourceful, she found a building in Hueytown and moved her business there. The growth continued and she moved two more times to keep pace.
By 2018, KeeCare's enrollment surpassed 60 children. Two years later, everything changed. The pandemic hit and many daycares shut down. Ms. Ragland was determined to keep her doors open.
"I needed to work," she says. "I had bills to pay. I remembered a tow truck owner from when I was a kid and tracked him down. He was 70 years old and still towing. I listened and learned from him, and in September 2020, I got my own LLC - Boss Lady Towing. I bought a medium flatbed tow truck and the rest is history. I now have four trucks and three employees, with new hires coming soon."
As the world went back to work, the child development center began to fill up again. Today, KeeCare operates out of a facility that has 12 employees, accommodates up to 155 children from birth to age 15, and houses two commercial kitchens and a standalone event space Ms. Ragland rents out for gatherings.
Sounds like a lot, right? Not for Ms. Ragland.
In 2024, she returned to Lawson State as an adult learner for a second time and, within a year, earned a degree in culinary arts - leveraging skills she had been honing since childhood as the oldest of four siblings as she helped out at home.
"Having that culinary degree behind my name helps me land catering jobs," she says, "and that second commercial kitchen allows me to do everything from selling cupcakes to catering wedding receptions."
Ms. Ragland also runs an event center which is often rented for birthday parties, family celebrations and more.
Now she is adding accounting to her degree portfolio - because running five businesses, including childcare, catering, towing, a rental home, and an event center, demands it.
"From driving the daycare van to dispatching for Boss Ladi Towing, I'm HR, accounting, operations...everything," she says. "I need to be able to handle my business. I've heard horror stories of the missteps people make with their accounting. My family likes to say I'm 'extra' or over the top. I say I'm blessed."
Boss Ladi Towing was created during the pandemic as Ms. Ragland looked for new ways
to diversify cash flow and keep the doors of KeeCare open, too. Now, the company operates
several tow trucks that serve the Birmingham area.
Through every degree and every business venture, Ms. Ragland says her greatest credential is the life she has lived.
"I get clients because I understand what they're going through," she says. "I understand economic pressures. I know what it's like to struggle - to pay bills, to pay for childcare, to pay rent, to buy food. The Lord has always made a way."
On commencement day, Ms. Ragland and Natassia Ragland - the toddler she walked to day care as a teenager, the baby she raised while working two jobs, while taking in other children who needed her, while launching companies to pay bills and put others to work - will cross the stage side by side.
Ms. Ragland's business advice to other graduates, especially those with dreams of entrepreneurship, is straightforward:
"Go for it. Do your research. When you first open your business, it's going to be hard. Don't give up. Stay focused. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. You have to be persistent."
Lawson State is committed to people like Tameika at every stage of life, from first-time college students to returning adults who are balancing work, family, and career goals. Learn more about Weekend College and other opportunities to earn your degree!
