Con-grad-ulations!
Something happened on my husband’s way to his college graduation. It took him almost 30 years to get there. Right out of Blanchard High School, my husband enrolled at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. He wasn’t ready for college and college wasn’t ready for him, so he changed course and signed up with the U.S. Air Force.
He did basic training in San Antonio, Texas, a stint in Guam and served at various bases stateside and found himself in harm’s way during several deployments, in particular to Somalia in 1993 and Iraq in 2004. Somewhere along the way, he met and married a wonderful woman. He also managed to take some college classes, but would often have to drop them because of a deployment.
When he retired, 26 years later, he was within a year or two of earning his bachelor’s degree. After paying $140 he still owed for 1979 cafeteria and dorm fees, he was able to enroll at SOSU. It’s hard to believe that balance was still on the books almost 30 years later. I wonder if it would have been still been there if the school owed him money.
This past Saturday, after many nights of classes, research papers, power point presentations and only one trip to the emergency room for stress and anxiety, my husband marched down with the 2008 fall graduating class and received his diploma. He was a little grayer than he was in 1979, but a lot wiser.
It was a nice day and a proud moment for his whole family, including his teenage son, when the first speaker began his opening remarks about a graduate who got sidetracked on the way to graduation.
Judy Hooper
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just came across. Nice blog