This granny was finally ready to be a grad.
Over 60 years after being denied her chance to graduate due to pregnancy, a grandmother from New Hampshire has finally received her college degree this commencement season.
Joan Alexander, aged 88, accomplished her long-held dream of earning a degree in education from the University of Maine last month. This milestone was realized after one of her daughters, Tracy, contacted the university earlier this year.
“I didn’t realize how much this would mean to me, but I now feel as though a gap in my heart has been filled,” Alexander expressed gratefully in a press release shared by the university.
She likely is the oldest graduate in the school’s history, the university said.
She should have obtained her degree in 1959, but at the time she wasn’t allowed to student teach – a requirement for graduation – because she was pregnant with her and her husband’s first of four daughters.
But Associate Dean for the College of Education and Human Development Justin Dimmel and other officials determined this year that when Alexander worked as a full-time aide for a preschool program in the early 1980s, that was enough to satisfy the mandate.
Dimmel said he was moved by Alexander’s story and said her “commitment to completing her undergraduate education was inspiring to me, my colleagues and the graduating class of 2025.”
While Alexander couldn’t make the trip to walk across the stage at the commencement ceremony on May 11, Tracy and granddaughter Isabel Beck attended instead. During the celebration, school president Joan Ferrini-Mundy gave Alexander a shoutout.
“It would have been wonderful for my mother to be able to attend commencement in person, but being there with my own daughter was very moving for me,” Tracy said.
“Everyone I met was so excited to have been able to help make this happen. I really felt that my mother was seen and recognized.”
The octogenarian graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education.
Alexander dutifully raised her four daughters, sometimes by herself for months at a time because her husband was a member of the Coast Guard.
The couple now lives in New Hampshire with one of their daughters, where Alexander has volunteered for her church, library and even a local elementary school at times.
“My parents did not complete college, so this was important to me,” the grandmother said in the school press release.
“My husband and four daughters have their college degrees, so I was the only one amongst my husband and daughters who had not received a college degree. It gives me a sense of closure and accomplishment.”
