Mona Freye dropped out of high school during the Great Depression to help support her family after her father died. For the rest of her life, she thought about the schooling she'd missed and longed for a college education.
This month, Freye, who turns 79 in July, will collect her bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley along with about 6,200 other undergraduates."It's been long, it's been hard, but very worthwhile. I loved every minute of it," Freye said.
She could be the oldest person ever to graduate from Berkeley, but campus officials aren't sure. Nonetheless, her feat is, to put it mildly, unusual.
She was a freshman when she left high school in New York City. "Mother was left with three children and no money. I thought I had to help them."
She found work in retail sales; then in 1936, she married. Her husband, Richard, was in the theater business. They moved to the Bay Area in 1941, and their daughter was born in 1944. Freye's husband opened a nightclub in San Francisco in 1952.
She worked for a women's clothing store in Oakland. "I always said I would go back to school, but my first priority was sending my daughter to college," said Freye.
Even after her daughter, Shell, was graduated, Freye hesitated.
"Then I woke up one morning and said I'm not going to stay home and watch TV, sit in the rocking chair and waste my life."
She received a high school equivalency degree from Berkeley Adult School and also took English courses at Laney Community College in Oakland.
She was accepted at UC-Berkeley and even won a scholarship covering fees. In the fall of 1987, she began her course work, majoring in English.
At first she found the experience of being around so many young students "threatening."
Berkeley's Re-Entry Program, which gives advice and support to students 25 and older, came to her aid. "Without their support, I wouldn't be here today," she said.
She wrote a poem about the feeling she was experiencing of being invisible, of walking into a classroom and having the other students look right through her, "as if I'm a blackboard, as if I'm a chair."
It took her a semester to get over her sense of isolation, she said. "However, I found I have wonderful rapport with all the profes-sors."
About 2,000 of Cal's 21,000 undergraduates are 25 or older, and to the staff at the Re-Entry Program, Freye is proof that education never ends. Helen Johnson, the program's coordinator, said "I have 24-year olds come in and say, `I'm too old to go back to college.' I just tell them about Mona.
"She loves to learn," said Johnson. "The faculty tell us she's wonderful to have in class."
Freye was out of school for one year after she broke her arm and suffered an illness. It took her six years to complete work for her degree.
Suffering from arthritis in her hands, Freye also got help from Cal's disabled students' program in writing class papers.
Now she is serving as a peer advocate at the Re-Entry Program, helping incoming students learn their way around the Berkeley campus.
About her plans for the future, Freye said, "I hope to pay back to the school what they gave back to me. Nobody's going to give me a job at my age. So I will create a job.
"I will give my time to the Re-Entry Program, the disabled students' program, the financial aid office. At least I will be doing something I think is of value.
"I feel wonderful now. On top of the world, almost. I have learned a lot, and my mind's been broadened."