'I'm going to be a graduate': Emotional Depression-era dropout, 97, receives her high school diploma EIGHTY YEARS later

It takes most high school students four years to get their diploma, but for 97-year-old dropout Ann Colagiovanni, graduation has been eight decades in the making.

The last time Colagiovanni, or Anna Lupica as she was known in the 1930s, sat in a classroom, Franklin Roosevelt was president and the Great Depression was in full swing.

At age 17, the statuesque, raven-haired beauty quit school to help her family financially by working at her father’s business, Lupica’s Grocery Meat Market, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, according to MyFox8.com.



Pomp & Circumstance: Ann Colagiovanni dressed up in a white cap and gown to receive her honorary high school diploma.



Proud moment: Colagiovanni, 97, was surrounded by family and friends when she finally became a high school graduate.

‘She did what her father wanted her to do, even though she wanted to graduate. She put her father, her family, before herself,’ said her daughter Emilia Colagiovanni Vinci.

But on Wednesday, the 97-year-old’s lifelong dream of becoming a graduate has finally come true when Shaker Heights High School bestowed her with an honorary diploma dated June of 1934.

‘That’s when we believe that would be the appropriate date,’ Mark Freeman, Shaker Heights School District Superintendent, told Colagiovanni.



Timeless: Colagiovanni's diploma was dated June 1934, which is when she was supposed to have graduated.

After quitting high school, Colagiovanni continued working at the family store until it closed in the 1960s. She eventually got married, had two daughters and 11 grandchildren.

The diploma, however, was the one piece of the puzzle she truly missed, according to her daughter.

‘When I told her she was getting a diploma, she sobbed as if a pain had been relieved from her heart,’ Colagiovanni Vinci said. ‘I never knew what it meant to her.’

As friends and family hummed Sir Edward Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ the proud nonagenarian entered a classroom with the help of a walker dressed in a white cap and gown.

Overcome with emotion, she said her father had always wanted her to have this special moment.

‘He’d be so happy to know that finally I’m going to be, I’m going to be a graduate,’ she said.

This week is special not only for Colagiovanni. Her grandson, Thomas Vinci, is also graduating from Shaker Heights – just one day after her.

‘It’s a big moment for us,’ Vinci said. ‘She looks so cute in that thing. I don’t even really know what to think.’



Although she will not be walking with her grandson and the rest of the class of 2012, Colagiovanni will be cheering on the graduates from the sidelines. Her daughter, however, promised that her 97-year-old mother will be decked in her graduation attire.

‘People are going to be confused when they see a 97-year-old in a cap and gown, but she’s going to wear her cap and gown tomorrow,’ Colagiovanni Vinci said.

Source: Snejana Farberov, Dailymail.co.uk, Friday 8th June 2012