90-Yr. Old. Ill. Woman Gets High School Diploma!

rockin'robin

rockin'robin

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CHICAGO — A 90-year-old suburban Chicago woman who dropped out of school to help her family during the Great Depression now has her high school diploma.

Eleanor Benz left Chicago Public Schools' Lake View High in 1936 during her senior year to take a job. Over the following decades she moved to the suburb of Gurnee and had 15 children, 54 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren.

Benz attended night school for typing and bookkeeping, but she recently told one of her daughters that never completing high school was one of her greatest disappointments. Her children contacted Lake View, and the school approved Benz's diploma.

This week, at her 90th birthday party, Benz's family presented her with the diploma and a 2009 gown and cap with a 1936 tassel.

90-Year-Old Illinois Woman Gets High School Diploma - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com
 
rockin'robin said:
CHICAGO — A 90-year-old suburban Chicago woman who dropped out of school to help her family during the Great Depression now has her high school diploma.

Eleanor Benz left Chicago Public Schools' Lake View High in 1936 during her senior year to take a job. Over the following decades she moved to the suburb of Gurnee and had 15 children, 54 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren.

Benz attended night school for typing and bookkeeping, but she recently told one of her daughters that never completing high school was one of her greatest disappointments. Her children contacted Lake View, and the school approved Benz's diploma.

This week, at her 90th birthday party, Benz's family presented her with the diploma and a 2009 gown and cap with a 1936 tassel.

90-Year-Old Illinois Woman Gets High School Diploma - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com
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Awesome!
 
It's nice to hear feel-good news stories every now and then rather than the disappointing and sad ones. :) :aw:
 
That's wonderful. This story put a smile on my face. :)
 
You know the old saying...

Better late than never.
 
Way to go, Granny! I notice more senior citizens in community colleges, and my neighbor, an eighty-year-old lady, is taking art classes. Cool.
 
That just goes to show that its never too late to do anything.
 
My mother only had a 8th grade education due to the crappy foster care system in Colorado, they were creating barriers so she couldn't go to school much of the time, and then she ended up having me at 16 years old, so she had to take a job to support me because of all my health issues that I was born with, so she never ever got to go back to school ever. She wanted to be an ASL interpreter, she even inquired someone on how to become an ASL interpreter as ASL was her passion but she found out that without a high school diploma she would never be able to become an ASL interpreter, so she was stuck. She had to work and she had to care for me and my sister too so she had no time to even try to study to pass the GED test either. She had all the GED books but no time to even crack them open. The last job she had, she was working in a crappy daycare above a bowling center and it didn't pay very much, it paid much less than the minimum wage back then but she still took the job because money was money. She had to support me and my sister while my dad worked, and when I was 8 my dad became a firefighter so he had to quit his job with the gas company in downtown Milwaukee so that he could have time to complete his training to become a firefighter, and that job doesn't even pay shit but it was something that was a passion to him as his dad was also a firefighter. I'm not sure but my great grandfather may have been a firefighter too as well, I don't know for sure.

So fuck this...very good jobs requiring high school diplomas created barriers to better job opportunities as was the case with my mother. If she had access to the opportunity to become an ASL interpreter I think she would have done very well, as ASL was her passion. It's just too bad.
 
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