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A Story Of Resilience: How Perry Cline Overcame Incarceration, Heroin Addiction To Earn A Degree

Sarah Edwards/Illinois Public Media
Perry Cline on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

Perry Cline’s story is a remarkable one. He’s a formerly incarcerated 51-year-old man who overcame the odds to graduate from the University of Illinois last month.

 

This is a follow-up to last week’s story about Cline and what it took for him to achieve his academic goals.

 

We felt it important to give Cline the space and a platform to tell that story himself — both in video and through a longer audio story.

 

You can find both below.

 

 

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

 

 

Lee V. Gaines is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine, Crain’s, the Pacific Standard and the Marshall Project. She also recently completed a fellowship with Chicago non-profit journalism lab, City Bureau.