Depression dropout gets diploma
by FrEiBeRgS2002 on Jun.21, 2009, under Weird News
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.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International
