From the ArcaMax Publishing, Weird News Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/weirdnews/s-561185-494656
CHICAGO (UPI) -- A Chicago-area woman who dropped out of high school
in her senior year to help her parents during the Depression has
received a diploma 73 years later.
In the intervening years, Eleanor Benz, 90, married, studied typing
and bookkeeping and produced 15 children, the Chicago Sun-Times
reported Saturday. She has 54 grandchildren and 37
great-grandchildren.
Benz said she wanted to stay at Lake View High School but felt she had
no choice.
"I only had a few months left, but a job opened up where my sister
worked, and that was a rare thing in 1936, to find a job before you
finished high school," she said. "It was turn your paycheck over ...
keep a couple of dollars for yourself. Then with getting married and
raising kids, I never did go back."
Benz's children arranged the diploma after she told one of them that
not graduating from high school was her greatest disappointment. Karen
Siciliano, a secretary at the school, found an old yearbook showing
Benz as a sophomore and other records.
Benz received the diploma, the yearbook and a cap and gown -- with a
class of 1936 tassel -- at her 90th birthday party May 30.