This weekend was a busy one for Dorian Joyner, Sr. This past Sunday morning, he watched his oldest son graduate from Morehouse College.
Joyner had a front row seat for commencement. After all, he was also a fellow graduate himself.
Joyner started his Morehouse journey back in 1984, but never finished. Three years ago, he decided it was time to come back. By then his son, Dorian Joyner, Jr. was already a freshman.
When the younger Joyner heard his father was coming back to Morehouse, he admits, it was a shock at first.
“I said, ‘oh, you’re coming back to visit some of your friends?'” he remembered. “And [Dorian Senior] said ‘no, I’m coming back to be a student.’ I said – can you repeat that?”
While most kids come to college to get away from their parents, Dorian Junior says he never felt like he was under his father’s thumb.
“We used to have a support system. Sometimes he would come to my room to ask about a problem or a class or a professor to take,” he said.
Daddy Dorian, who allows his son to call him by his first name on campus, said the two have their own friends and schedules, so their paths rarely intersect.
But after three years of learning from and pushing each other, the two have a bond that goes deeper that father and son.
“We’re Morehouse brothers,” the two said proudly.Dorian Senior plans to pursue a law degree and eventually become a judge. His son has applied for the Peace Corps and hopes to spend two years traveling before attending film school.
