FLORENCE, S.C. -- When Grady Moore visited the Francis Marion University bookstore to pick up his cap and gown for Saturday's commencement, several people asked him if he was a professor.

"I told them 'I'm afraid not,'" said Moore. "'(Just a) struggling student.'"

Moore isn't actually struggling but the mistaken identity is easy to explain. He's 59, a "fifth-year" senior who managed to graduate from FMU in just ... 41 years.

Moore, who'll graduate with a bachelor of science in economics, had to drop out of school unexpectedly in 1975, just as he was starting his senior year. Life happened after that. He took the family business and turned it into a raging success, a career that, perhaps, argued against the need for an actual degree.

He didn't come back to FMU until 2011, after the business had been sold. With a little time on his hands, Moore approached the dean of the business school, M. Barry O'Brien, to see if it was even possible to re-enroll so many years later.

It was, but a 40-year gap was certainly unusual, O'Brien said.

"Usually when I re-admit students, they've either failed out or this that and the other," said O'Brien. "I said, 'Tell me what's going on here,' and he said, 'Well, I dropped out of school back in 1975 and now I'm retired.' And, very humbly, he said nothing about the fact that he built this incredible business and all of this. And I said, 'Why do you want a degree?' And I didn't want to ask him how old he was but he wasn't 25, and he said, 'I don't like to leave business unfinished even if all my friends think I'm crazy.'"

To Moore's surprise and delight, with a little digging around the registrar's records and some translation of old curricula, re-admittance was easy.

Now, all he has to do is march on Saturday, along with 350-some other grads, most about the age of his children.

When Moore left school the first time, it was after his father's death in October of his senior year. He had stacked his course schedule so that with the exception of a business law class, he had mostly electives to coast through his final year.

But with his father gone, Moore had no time for school. He had to pick up the reins of the family business, Williamsburg Beverage, a wholesale beer distributorship based in Kingstree that served a three-county area. It quickly became clear that being a full-time student and a full-time business owner and manager was spreading Moore too thin. So, with only a major course credit left to a business degree and two economics classes to a double major, he dropped out.

"I went to my mother and I said, 'Mom, I can't to both.' So she said, 'Promise me you'll go back to school one of these days,'" Moore recalled.

Even with his training, the first few years were "trial by fire" for Moore. But in no time he was building a regional beer empire. The company's contract was with Schlitz Brewing, which had a development program that recognized 10 distributors with high awards annually. In both 1977 and 1978, Williamsburg Beverage won its category.

"Given our size volume, we were the best in the nation," Moore said. "This was back in the heyday of Schlitz Brewing Company. They wined and dined us in San Francisco for a week, your own limo, your own guide, dinners on top of the Bank of America building and it was just to the hilt. The following year, boom, we won it again, off to New York, Plaza Hotel."

In 1982, Williamsburg Beverage was one of the first wholesalers in the state approached by Coors Brewing in its East Coast expansion. Moore jumped on the opportunity, calling it a beer distributor's "match made in heaven."

Eventually covering up to five counties, Moore said the business performed really well for its size, and constantly got offers to sell the franchise rights.

"We had a sweet operation that ran like a Timex watch," Moore said. "Headaches were few and far between, and the good days vastly outnumbered the bad."

But by 2007, when Coors merged with Miller and let distributors know they planned to consolidate, the competitive business got to be too much.

By 2010 Moore sold the franchise rights to the Yahnis Company in Florence, which he called the hardest decision he has ever made but one that was unavoidable. He spent the next year selling off the company's tangible assets.

And, getting ready to go back to school.

Looking for some structure in his life after spending years working 60 hours a week, Moore said finishing school was next on his to-do list.

When he got back on campus, it wasn't all new faces, though. Some of his old classmates and fraternity brothers were still there.

They are professors and school trustees.

But that campus had grown up from its infancy -- FMU was founded in 1970, just a year or so before Moore enrolled -- and became a full-fledged university with a large student population and excellent facilities.

At first, said Moore, it wasn't easy to get back into the swing of things. He bombed his first quiz with a 48 and began reconsidering his decision to go back to class. But after taking a computer class to get him up to speed on technology, he back back in the swing of things and started enjoying classes.

O'Brien, who now calls Moore a friend, said it was also great to have a seasoned businessman in the upper level economic class he taught. Moore was able to provide perspective and enhance the discussion.

"Having him in class, he never pulled rank on the other students, but he added so much to the classes because he had experienced so much in business," O'Brien said. "I was more of a facilitator in the course, and it was great that he could bring some real world applications and experiences to it, and the way he did it, the students really enjoyed it. The friendships across generations he formed, it's just amazing. It's not like he hung out with them other than academically, but they just enjoyed having him. It was a little inspirational."

Moore laughed at O'Brien's description and called himself the "Rodney Dangerfield" of the group, a reference to Dangerfield's "Back to School" movie in which the comedian plays an aging businessman who returns to college. More said his classmates carried him many a time.

Now Moore's excited about graduating. His family is, too. He has more family coming into town to see him walk across the stage than he yet has tickets for the event.

And though his mother, who passed away in 2007, won't be there physically to witness Moore's accomplishment, he's proud that he kept his promise to her.

He doesn't know how he'll use his brand new degree yet. With a volatile business climate and retirement savings to protect, Moore isn't looking to put in the long hours or take the risks he did at 25.

But, if the right opportunity came along, he said he'd jump at the chance to get back in the business world.

(c)2013 the Florence Morning News (Florence, S.C.)

Visit the Florence Morning News (Florence, S.C.) at www2.scnow.com/community/morningnews

Distributed by MCT Information Services

(c) Florence Morning News, S.C.