Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

WILL TO SUCCEED: Breaking New Ground

Valley woman overcomes poverty to raise her children, build a career

Claudian Bohana stands in front of the Wynn Las Vegas construction project, where she works as an electrician. By becoming an electrician several years ago, Bohana says she was able to get off welfare and provide a better life for her six children. Photo by Ralph Fountain. Claudian Bohana loads her tools into her van after finishing a shift on her construction job at Wynn Las Vegas. Bohana was honored as a Woman of Triumph last month by the national nonprofit Women Work! for learning a trade and becoming financially independent. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

Armed only with $150, a phone number and a sense of desperation, Claudian Bohana packed up her six children in 1993 and fled a tumultuous life in Los Angeles, bound for the promised land of Las Vegas.

That is where, people said, even the uneducated earn a living wage, raise their kids and flourish. To a woman on welfare with little hope of ever getting ahead, Las Vegas sounded like a Shangri-La for the down and out, a sanctuary for those needing a second chance.

Bohana didn't know it when she stepped off the Greyhound bus in downtown Las Vegas, but her decision turned out to be both her undoing and her salvation.

Despite her best efforts, Bohana left Los Angeles destitute and ended up homeless in Las Vegas, she says. At 38, she was living in a shelter with nothing more than a change of clothing and a toothbrush for each child.

Unwilling to let that be the end of her story, she pushed herself, in typical Bohana fashion, friends say, to rise above what statistics predicted her future would be. Last month Bohana was recognized for her success during a reception in Washington, D.C.

"That was the icing on the cake to me," Bohana, now 48, says of being honored by the national women's group Women Work! as a Woman of Triumph.

The award was bestowed on 25 women from across the country who achieved economic independence by overcoming exceptional challenges in their lives.

Bohana, now an electrician, was selected "because of her impressive skills and extraordinary drive and determination" in learning a trade and turning her life around, says Jill Miller, the organization's spokeswoman.

Her friends say, while that's true, it barely begins to tell the inspiring story of a woman hellbent on having her way.

Life for Bohana wasn't going as planned in Los Angeles.

She worked hard as a legal secretary and earned a good wage, $18 an hour, she remembers. But her husband had left her in 1988 to raise the children alone. With six mouths to feed and the cost of living in Los Angeles, the money didn't go far enough. Her mother threatened to take the children. That's when Bohana came up with the idea to leave.

"I said, `OK, fine,' " she recalls. Bohana went to her pastor, who gave her the phone number of his friend in Las Vegas, Willie Cherry.

It was Sept. 16 around 10 p.m., when the Cherrys' phone rang. They were in bed but got up and prepared to meet the new arrivals at the bus station.

"Pastor Curtis Morris out of L.A. had called me and told me a woman with six children was coming here with no place to stay and asked if I could help her," Cherry recalls.

His wife, Jennie, was surprised, and a little impressed, that a woman in Bohana's situation would move to a new town, with no friends or family to help and no clear idea of where she would live or how she would make money.

They settled her into a motel room on the first night, then helped her get into Shade Tree shelter. Deeply religious, Bohana joined their church. They knew she intended to establish herself in Las Vegas, but Willie Cherry had doubts.

"I thought she would be a statistic, a project girl," Cherry says bluntly.

But the more he got to know the real Bohana, the more he thought he might have to revise his opinion.

"I think most ladies with that many children, they throw their hands up, settle for whatever comes their way," Cherry says. "But she didn't have that kind of mind-set. She was very eager. She was dedicated. She just kept on chugging along and here she is today."

Bohana was stubborn and determined, Cherry says, the kind of woman who wouldn't take no for an answer. That's why he suggested she learn his trade and become an electrician, despite thinking that the field is dominated by men.

"I knew it would be hard. But I knew if she was the person I thought she was, she would be able to handle it. And I knew if she made it through, she would have a good life for her and the children," Cherry explains.

In 1994, Bohana entered the workforce re-entry program through the Community College of Southern Nevada. She attended night classes, riding her bicycle to school when she couldn't afford the bus.

Santarpia McNeill, now the director of the pre-apprenticeship program at the Re-entry Center, remembers being impressed when she first met Bohana three years ago. She had heard the stories of how Bohana, without a car, rode her bicycle to job sites around town, worked with dozens of men who didn't want a woman on the job, enduring a hostile environment, at first.

The men were resistant to her, made Bohana prove herself again and again, McNeill says.

At home, she raised her six children, ages 6 to 14, alone. She worked to get her family out of the shelter after two months, staying in the church rectory for a while before finding a place she could afford to rent, Jennie Cherry recalls.

It takes a special kind of woman to change her own destiny, especially when the odds are against her as they were in Bohana's case, McNeill says. During the past 10 years, of the approximate 250 women who have been through the program, only 10 went on to have careers in their trades, she says.

"I thought, `Wow, she must be a tough customer to have gone through that,' " McNeill says of her first thoughts about Bohana. "It's a very male chauvinistic world, they don't want us there. It's extremely hard; they build barriers. Just think about using the Portapotty after 25 men. They don't want to hear about child care issues. They wanted her there at 5 in the morning, and she didn't have a car. But she was there."

McNeill says she nominated Bohana for the award "because of the hardships she has overcome, because she was a single mother of six children and because of all the things she's dealt with being a woman in a man's world. She is a wonderful person and should be an inspiration to any woman who is trying to attain anything. To not only survive but rise to the level she's at is fantastic."

Bohana earned her electrician's apprenticeship and joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 357 in 1995. She started her first job with Sturgeon Electric, remodeling the rooms at The Mirage.

"She was selected against all odds, and I say that because number one she's female and number two she's black," Willie Cherry says. "She made it through. I know some instances they kept her on brooms and cleanup detail but against all those odds, she hung in there, did the best she could."

Tony Shackelton, her foreman then and her general foreman on her current job with Bombard Electric, remembers how green Bohana was.

"She didn't know anything," he says of the then-apprentice. "But a lot of people, when they get in the trade, don't know what's going on. Claudian handled it well and developed her skills."

As a journeyman electrician, Bohana can take a set of plans for a job and do just about everything required electrically, Shackelton says. Her willingness to try anything and keep an open mind probably contributes to her success in what has long been considered a man's field, he adds.

"It's hard in general, but it's harder for a woman," says Shackelton, who supervises three women in his 29-member crew.

Bohana has been doing underground work at Wynn Las Vegas, laying pipe, pulling wire and installing panels.

"It's hard, back-breaking work. She's done a good job, a real good job," Shackelton says. "Claudian's been real good to work with."

Bohana says it wasn't easy but she had no other options. Her children are grown, with the youngest graduating from high school later this year. There were difficulties along the way, but overall, the Bohanas have done well.

"With my faith and my belief in myself, I did it. I didn't give up. I didn't have the option to fail. I had no choice but to make it," she says. "Statistically, I'm not supposed to be where I'm at. My kids aren't supposed to be where they're at. I'm proud of all of them. I can't say everything's been smooth sailing. We had nothing. It's nice to see the transition."

Bohana says she's looking forward to buying a house later this year and plans to go back to college to get a psychology degree. She sees her life as potential inspiration for women who are experiencing difficulties in their lives. And she hopes, in time, to help others get off welfare and find success.

Bohana's life shows that it's possible for women to accomplish what they set out to do, Willie Cherry says. "Don't settle for less. Shoot for the stars and maybe you'll fall on some clouds."