Education a priority for Richland student, after parents fled Kosovo

There was never a question about whether Edon “Doni” Ferati would go to college.

It was just a matter of where.

The drive for a higher education was instilled in the Richland High School senior by his parents, who sacrificed a comfortable life in Kosovo and traveled more than 4,600 miles to give their children a better life.

His father, a successful attorney, and his mother, a nursing school student, were caring for Ferati and his older brother and sister when fighting broke out in 1998 between the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

“We stayed there during the war for part of the time, and then when I was 4 months old, I started getting sick,” Ferati said. “My parents just knew it would be an awful environment to raise a sick child — or any child at all.”

The family, now refugees from the conflict, landed in New Jersey for six weeks before they were adopted by a Kennewick family. They moved to Richland a few years later.

The family arrived in the United States unable to speak English, and the education Ferati’s parents earned in Yugoslavia did not translate to degrees in their new country.

They were undeterred. Ferati’s father is now a pizza delivery driver and school bus driver, and his mother is a janitor at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Ferati doesn’t remember the family’s move from the Eastern European country, but the drastic change in their financial status affected his childhood.

“When I grew up, I didn’t always see the struggles because they did a really good job of hiding them,” he said. “By the time I started getting a little more mature, like middle school, I was starting to realize then.”

Trips to restaurants, Christmas presents and other luxuries were not something Ferati’s family could afford, but they did not dwell it, he said.

“I never went to a legitimate restaurant until eighth grade,” he said. “So when all of my friends would talk about that, I had no idea. I had been to McDonald’s several times, but besides that no restaurants.”

There was real pressure to succeed, and he held himself to high standards in school. A straight-A student most of the time, he recalled his parents needing to console him after he received his first B-plus grade when he was in middle school.

“I cried to my parents, lying on the ground, like ‘I’m sorry.’” he said.

They told him it was OK, and he didn’t need to feel bad for them. He was working to improve his own life.

Ferati is leaving Richland High School with a 3.85 grade point average, and has been accepted to the University of Washington. He plans to pursue a political science degree and end up either practicing law or serving in government.

He is following his two older siblings into college. His sister is pursuing a law degree, and his brother is double-majoring in biology and chemistry.

He credits a portion of his success in high school to the Advancement Via Individual Determination program. The classes are aimed at helping first-generation college students learn the skills to make the transition from high school to college easier.

The program helped him with organization and provided him with tips for how to get into college.

Ferati is excited for the future, he said.

“It hasn’t totally hit me yet. I’m still feeling like I should come back to school at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said.

And his parents are proud of his success, Ferati said.

“I applied to places like University of Washington and Gonzaga, and my sister told my parents ... ‘these are really good, really difficult schools,’ ” he said. “ ‘You should be really proud that he can do this in the first place.’ ”

“Then when I got accepted into all of the schools I applied to, my parents were freaking out.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2017 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Education a priority for Richland student, after parents fled Kosovo."