73-year-old earns her high school diploma
Posted on Saturday, June 14, 2008
LEACHVILLE — The last time Mary Breeden had cracked a school textbook, the war in Korea was in its infancy and the United Nations had just opened.
Color television was introduced in the United States, and New York Giants baseball player Bobby Thomson had yet to hit his “Shot Heard ’Round the World” home run that defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers.
It was the spring of 1951 and Breeden, then 16, went to 10 th grade for the first week at Childress High School in Craighead County before dropping out to marry and work in the cotton fields of eastern Craighead and western Mississippi counties.
The lack of a high school diploma bothered Breeden, though.
It stayed in the back of her mind as she raised her 10 children and, in a later marriage, eight more youngsters.
Now, 57 years later, Breeden has completed work on her General Educational Development at Arkansas Northeastern College in Leachville and today she will graduate with 11 other students.
“I never lost my dream of finishing high school,” she said Thursday at the college while taking a computer class. “I kept thinking about it. It stayed with me.” Breeden, 73, slipped headphones on, her white hair pulled back into a small bun. She listened to recorded instructions and clicked on icons on her computer screen when told.
When she receives her diploma Saturday morning at the college’s Blytheville campus, she will be the first in her family to earn one, she said.
Breeden’s situation is uncommon, said Janice Hanlon, state GED administrator with the Arkansas Department of Workforce Education. Only 25 people 60 years or older received the degree last year, she said.
“As people get older, they are less likely to go back to school,” Hanlon said. “We catch the young people, but the older ones are more rare.” The average age of a student earning his GED at one of the state’s 62 testing centers is 17 to 25, she said.
Breeden was born in Leachville in 1935 and went to school at Childress, a small farming community north of Monette. The school has since merged with Monette.
In 1951, she married Walter Morgan and left school. The couple had one child before he died.
“I had to leave school to keep house,” she said.
She also picked and chopped cotton for her father.
She later married a second time and had nine children; the workload associated with her family kept her from returning to school.
“It was always there,” she said of her desire to earn her degree. “But I had to keep working.” Breeden married a third time in 1973 after her second husband passed away. He had eight children from a previous marriage.
Again, the delays in furthering her education set in.
“There are all sorts of situations that people [not completing high school ] deal with,” Hanlon said. “There’s family reasons. Some get bored with school. Others get in some type of trouble.” But in February 2007, Breeden visited the city library in Leachville and noticed students studying there.
“She asked what they were doing,” said Sherryl Cooley, an instructor for Arkansas Northeastern College. “I told her it was a GED class, and she was interested.” Breeden enrolled in the free class and, 15 months later, she’s completed the degree.
She took classes two times a week, struggling with math, but enjoying reading and English.
“I said they picked my brain,” Breeden said. “I wanted to quit a few times. I thought, ‘What am I doing here ?’ But I’m not a quitter.” She often studied with teenagers enrolled in the course. They called her “Miss Mary” and said she was an inspiration to their own progress, Cooley said.
“They said if Miss Mary could do it, they could,” the instructor said.
Breeden is the oldest student to earn her GED at the Leachville facility, said Amy Butts, a statistician with the Arkansas Northeastern College who has worked there for 24 years.
“It’s hard for a student to come back here if they fail a test,” Butts said. “They’ve had other failures in the past; you lose them if they fail again.
“ But Mary is impressive,” Butts said. “She didn’t pass a math exam. She came back immediately.” Breeden is the featured speaker today at her graduation. She’s written her speech, but she’s nervous about delivering it.
“I’ll thank everyone involved, and then I’ll thank the Lord,” she said.
Her newfound pursuit of education won’t stop with her GED. She’s enrolled in a computer class and sent her first e-mail Wednesday.
She’s also thinking of going on to college to learn more about computers.
“I feel like I accomplished something,” Breeden said of her diploma. “I was never very confident in myself. I feel better about myself now.
“ I’ve been out of school too long, and a lot has changed,” she said. “But I’m going to keep trying to learn more.”
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