A 97-year-old woman has received an honorary diploma from a Grand Rapids, Michigan high school, eight decades after she was forced to drop out to help her family.
Margaret Thome Bekema finally was able to don a mortarboard and fulfill her lifelong goal at a ceremony in front of her friends and family on Thursday.
School administrators from Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids presented her with the diploma at the Yorkshire and Stonebridge Manor senior community in Walker.
Bekema would have graduated with the Class of 1936, but she left during her junior year to care for her three younger siblings because her mother was ill with cancer.
At the time, she was 17 years old and an A and B student.
'I had to quit school to take over the family,' said Bekema, according to MLive. 'It was hard, you have no idea how hard that was. I loved high school and I had lots of friends.'
Bekema was called home by her father when her mother became ill with cancer. She was required to cook, clean and make all of her siblings' clothes.
She also took care of her mother until she died.
'I thank you from the bottom of my heart,' she said while tearing up happily while receiving the long-awaited diploma from principal Greg Deja.
Gerri Smith, one of Bekema's two children and also a graduate of Catholic Central, said that her mother always regretted not graduating with her class.
Her mother worked for an office of a government agency during WWII and also worked at a preschool at Grace Episcopal Church for 17 years. Her husband, Ted, was in the military.
She said they had a 'good life.'
But she always longed for her diploma.
Sister Maureen Geary, the daughter of Bekema's cousin Marian, contacted the school in August about getting her relative an honorary diploma, and it agreed to give her one.
'Her life has been one of sacrifice and service,' said principal Deja of the school's oldest graduate.
Bekema is now part of Catholic Central's alumni associate, aptly named The Pride.
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