Tessa Hutchinson

Dublin area homeschool graduate Tessa Hutchinson was widowed at 22, and had to reshape the course of her life to make ends meet as a single mother. Over a decade later, Hutchinson has found a way to move forward, and is enjoying living in Dublin with her children and fiance, and working at the Veldhuizen Cheese Shoppe.

Hutchinson was homeschooled for all grades. “We didn’t socialize a whole lot,” she said. “We joined a homeschool group, and once a week we would go to Tarleton and have PE, and then we’d go to church, which was where I got to socialize and meet people.”

She finished high school in 2004 when she was 16, and started working full time at the Buckboard restaurant, which her aunt and uncle owned.

When she was 18, she decided to try going to beauty school. “I liked the experience of going to school and learning about everything in a school setting, which I had never really experienced,” Hutchinson said. “But when I started doing people’s hair I realized I didn’t like it.”

So she went back to work at the Buckboard full time. “I loved working there, I loved the people,” she said. “I learned a lot just working as a waitress. Being homeschooled, you don’t really realize there’s so many different people. You’re kind of secluded, and [at the Buckboard] I got to meet a lot of people, so I really appreciated that aspect of my life.”

Hutchinson worked at the Buckboard until 2008, when she got married. Her husband, Jeffrey Hutchinson, was a piercer at a tattoo shop. They met in 2007 at the tattoo shop, and married in 2008. The couple had one child together, but Hutchinson’s husband passed away only a couple of years later, leaving Hutchinson to support their son as a single mom at only 22.

“Losing my husband was a very scary time,” she said. “We were so young and full of life, and we had lots of plans.”

In order to provide for her small family, Hutchinson started looking for work, taking odd jobs for about a year, before she decided to go to dental assistant school. She started work with an orthodontist in Stephenville, but discovered that career wasn’t right for her either; “I didn’t like making the kids cry,” she said.

Finally, she found a job she enjoyed: working as an artisan cheese maker at the Veldhuizen family farm. “I love what I do and my work family,” she said. “I’ve known the Veldhuizens since I was about 10, because we were in the same homeschool group.”

She currently works part time making cheese a few days a week. “Those days are full days,” she said. “It takes all day to make cheese. I start out a cheese making day with sanitizing the cheese moulds and the cheddar mill. We drain the whey out of the big old vat and we let it set up so we can cheddar it and then pack it up. We make anywhere between 30 to 50 cheese wheels in a day.”

Hutchinson enjoys the close knit environment of the farm. “My supervisor is actually a girl that moved here from out of state and was my neighbor growing up,” she said. “It’s really cool how we’ve all just kind of reconnected in our adult years.”

Hutchinson lives outside of town with her fiance, Brandon Taylor, and her two children. She and Taylor, who works in the HVAC business in the Fort Worth area, met through a mutual friend two years ago, and haven’t spent a day apart since. “I’ve never had that with anybody, and it’s pretty great,” she said.

Her two younger children both attend Dublin schools. Her daughter, Kimber, is 10 and in fifth grade and her son, Tanis, is 12 and in sixth grade. Her older step-son Ganon from her previous marriage is 21, and he is currently in college studying computer animation. “All I ever wanted to do in life was be a mom,” Hutchinson said. “I’ve never had a dream career or anything; I’ve always wanted to live comfortably and take care of my kids, and that’s been my inspiration in life.”

When she gets some free time, Hutchinson loves to garden and take on projects. She inherited her grandparents house, and is currently fixing it up. “It’s a three-story A-frame house,” she said. “Everybody, the whole family, worked together to build it 36 years ago. I inherited it, and it’s a work in progress. We are repairing and remodeling it, so it seems like every day there is a new project.”

Another project involves a car her grandfather gave her when she was 16. “He had a 1973 Mustang, and that’s the car I learned to drive in,” Hutchinson said. “He gave it to me when I was 16; it was an amazing car.”

Hutchinson’s family ended up selling the car, but recently she was able to buy it back. The people who bought it had barely touched it — Hutchinson’s insurance was still in the front seat. Now, she, her fiance and her son are working on the car, hoping to get it up and running by the time her son is 16.

Hutchinson offers the following advice to Dublin graduates: “I would just like for everyone to just try a little kindness,” she said. “If we would all just start being nicer to everybody, the world would be so much better.”

Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.