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Wyandotte Woman Honors Her 'Amazing' Mother

Once a high school dropout and now a college professor and published author, Joanna Sabo has overcome many challenges in her life.

No one would argue that Joanna Sabo is a Downriver success story.

Once a young high school dropout, the Wyandotte native later turned her life around to earn several college degrees and is now a college professor and published author. Along the way, she also beat cancer.

And yet her most cherished role has been mother to her daughter Ronnie Rose of Wyandotte.

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“My mom is amazing,” Rose wrote in an online contest leading up to Mother’s Day 2011. "At 16, she was faced with a tough life choice. She decided to face the challenge of being a young mother and never looked back at her decision. Cancer later took away her chances at having more children.

“After dropping out of (high school), getting her GED, struggling to make marriage work, she ended up raising me alone."

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Sabo, who has remarried and is stepmother to 12-year-old Sammy Sabo, is a professor of political science at Monroe County Community College and owns a successful consulting business.

She never hid the facts of her “rough life” from her daughter, who now is married, has three children of her own and is well-known throughout Wyandotte for her years as a preschool teacher. In fact, Sabo was very involved in Rose’s life and said the two have benefited from their experiences.

“She’s something else–that daughter of mine,” Sabo, 52, said. “She’s the best preschool teacher in all of Downriver. She can’t go anywhere in Wyandotte without somebody hugging her.”

While raising her daughter as a single mother, Sabo attended night school in Southgate to earn her high school diploma. Those days, the general equivalency degree test was given for high school credit. Now the GED is issued in lieu of a diploma. Sabo said night school helped prepare her for continuing education.

At 24, Sabo was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and cervix. Her doctor said she needed to visit the oncology center at Harper Hospital in Detroit. Physicians performed some tests and concluded the cancer was “pretty localized” and they could treat it by performing a hysterectomy. The surgery left Sabo unable to have any more children.

“I was lucky it wasn’t too extensive,” she said. “I was kind of a guinea pig at Wayne State. When I had it, they were trying some new things. I didn’t have to go through chemotherapy. I’ve watched people go through bigger battles. I was kind of young. I was shocked it was over so fast.”

Sabo earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public administration at Eastern Michigan University. She found herself working in a corporate job that offered long hours and not much personal reward. As the job was “taking off,” her daughter “hit her teens” and Sabo decided to change her career focus and focus more on her child.

“She was 14 at the time and was too old for latchkey and too young to be left alone,” Sabo said. “It was time to put her in front of my career. I really felt that way.”

In 1991, Sabo left her $43,000 a year job. She received a $1,000 contract with the Ferndale Police Department and opened a home-based business out of a spare bedroom.

“I told her I was doing this so I’d be home most days,” Sabo said. “I’m not sure she liked the idea. She was starting to feel her teen wings a little bit.”

Sabo said her daughter “kind of is and was the center of my universe. But I never spoiled her. I raised her with a pretty firm hand. She used to get angry that I wouldn’t let her spend the night at a friend’s house unless I talked to her parents. I did that through her senior year.”

The results were rewarding, Sabo said. She watched her daughter serve in student government and become a cheerleader. Football players stopped by the house regularly to visit after games. Sabo chaperoned many dances.

“Her high school years were our best years,” Sabo said. “Parents need to understand that in their teen years, there are going to be some rough bumps. Sometimes, you’re going to fight. Fights are OK, but you’ve got to embrace the people they are at that time. Teens are a blast.”

As her daughter got older, Sabo looked for a way to “shore up” her income and took a job teaching a class at Monroe County Community College. She volunteered to serve on committees focusing on total quality management, using her college minor in business. Eventually, she taught business and political science.

“I fell in love with teaching,” she said.

When MCCC had an opening for the dean of the Business Department, she applied and was hired. Three years later, while finishing her PhD in political science at Wayne State University, she accepted a reassignment to teach political science. She is self-trained in international relations and the Middle East.

“I have been doing that since 1997,” Sabo said. “I have to pinch myself every day, I love my job so much.”

She also founded the campus' “study abroad program,” a spring semester class that gives students a chance to earn credit while studying overseas. The current class leaves Tuesday for Eastern Europe and Sabo will be there as instructor.

She published an activities textbook called Interactive Learning Kit for American Government, which is now in its fourth edition. The book is used at MCCC and other schools, providing classroom and Internet activities for American government courses.

Currently living on Grosse Ile with her husband of six years, James, Sabo also is writing a book that will be “a call to arms on local government.”

Her consulting company, Beyond Interactive Training, continues to flourish, mostly through word of mouth. She provides management workshops and seminars that specialize in supervision skills, time management and customer service.

On this Mother’s Day, Sabo remembers she was complimented recently on advice she gave others.

“Whenever you talk to your child, never talk over your shoulder or off the cuff or while you’re running through the room,” she said. “Give them your whole face. I always looked at my daughter eye to eye. When she was little, I got on my knees and held her hands and looked her right in the face. Today, she grabs her boys’ cheeks and is face to face with them.

“If you’re doing something else and yelling something at them, it’s not the best communication. When you’re talking to a child, talk to the child. Give them that communication. The results are amazing.”

Sabo said her daughter is a “super gifted” woman who she is “so immensely proud of.”

Since being laid off by Wyandotte Public Schools, Rose has been teaching at Downriver Gymnastics in Riverview.

Sabo said she passed on to her daughter the family traditions she learned from her parents.

“My family still gets together for every holiday,” she said.  “Family is so, so important. I think that because Ronnie has a young family with very rambunctious boys, she calls on me a lot. ‘Can you help me with that?’ And I hope I’m there for her.

“She might be a better daughter than I am a mother. She is just awesome. I work long hours and we still have dinner at her house once a week.”

Sabo said the hardest thing about motherhood is realizing your children aren’t young any more.

“When you’re in your 50s and your daughter has kids of her own, you can’t find the 9-year-old Ronnie and give her a hug,” Sabo said. “You can’t find the 15-year-old Ronnie to giggle with. You never get to see those people again.

“Even with my grandsons: Spencer is 2. In a couple months, we won’t have that adorable 2-year-old again. It’s like that at every age.

“I wish I could have her arms around me again. That’s what makes grandchildren so special.”

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