Audrey Crabtree, 99-Years-Old, Finally Earns High School Diploma

Audrey Crabtree proves that it’s never too late to go back to school and get your high school diploma.

Crabtree, 99-years-old, had dropped out of high school more than 80 years ago.

According to the Huffington Post, Crabtree smiled Monday as she received an honorary diploma for her time at Waterloo East High School.

“I feel so much smarter,” Crabtree stated.

Huffington Post continued on to report that Crabtree left high school in 1932 due to a swimming and diving accident that forced her to miss several days of school and having to provide care for her grandmother.

“I was a senior, but I was short a credit, so I would’ve had to go back the next fall,” she told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

The report continued on to say that returning the next fall would have interfered with plans she had to marry Chuck Gerdes of Dunkerton, whom she had been dating at that time.

Throughout her life, Audrey Crabtree married three times and ran a flower shop in order to help care for her growing family.

Now, Crabtree lives in a Cedar Falls retirement home.

According to Huffington Post, Shelley Hoffman, Crabtree’s granddaughter, stated that her grandmother “had voiced quite a while back the one regret she had in life was that she never had gotten her diploma.”

During an education board meeting, Crabtree was presented with not only her diploma but also memorabilia from her time at the high school, including a jacket and homecoming pins.

Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported that a Hoover Middle School social studies teacher, Sarah Dierks, was so inspired by Crabtree, she had her students make cards and present them to Crabtree.

“I wouldn’t advise anyone to drop out,” Audrey Crabtree said. “I just have to say in my life the Lord has been so good.”

[Image via Shutterstock/Valerie Potapova]