Its Never Too Late
July 2009
In her senior year at the Chicago Public Schools’ Lake View High, Eleanor Benz, a teenager, had to drop out of school to help her parents struggle to provide for their seven children. It was during the Great Depression. Now, 73 years and 15 kids later, Eleanor Benz, at 90, is a high school graduate!
In 1936, it was a rare thing to find a job before you were out of high school and Eleanor’s family needed that money, so she willingly sacrificed her degree. She worked for several years after leaving school and even attended night school for typing and bookkeeping.
It was on the eve of her 90th birthday that her children found out what had always nagged their mother. Eleanor’s greatest disappointment was that she had to quit school half a year before she would have graduated. Her children then contacted Lake View and the school secretary Karen Siciliano took this on as a mission as she really appreciated the children’s efforts to grant their mother’s wish.
Eleanor Benz’s diploma was approved and on her 90th birthday on May 30, 2009, she received her diploma dated February 1, 1936, along with a cap and gown with a 1936 tassel and wooden replica of Lake View in the 1930s. An ecstatic Benz said she felt blessed!
Eleanor Benz has set an example that if you persist and have faith, you can achieve anything, no matter how impossible it seems! Also, the loving gesture made by her children underlines the fact that sacrifice always pays. Eleanor received the repayment of her sacrifice for her family in the form of her most cherished dream coming true, so all of us just need to remember that hope indeed floats!
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