98-Year-Old Woman Graduates High School
By Leslie Brinkley
abclocal.go.com
June 13 - KGO - Graduation time is a special day for any student who worked hard to get their diploma, and for one student, it's a really, really big deal. That's because she's 98 years old. Josephine Belasco is getting her diploma from Galileo High School in San Francisco tomorrow.
Saying the white cap and gown will compliment her coloring, 98-year-old Josephine Belasco is gearing up for graduation day.
Josephine Belasco, 98-year-old graduate: "Can you imagine that, a cap and gown? My friends won't recognize me."
Belasco has lived in her San Francisco flat since 1929. She's worked and raised a family. With no elevator, she walks up and down the 43 steps in her building everyday, gets around on BART and loves to shop at Nordstrom.
At 98 years old, she's outlived most of her friends. But the dream that never died was getting her high school diploma.
She attended Galileo High School from 1921 to 1924, but never graduated. She went back to the school this year to change all that.
Josephine Belasco: "It was so many years ago, you know, it looked beautiful really."
What came back were memories of her strict father.
Josephine Belasco: "He used to leave his place of business and come to Galileo and look around to see what I was doing, if I was talking to boys."
The school unearthed her old records and with some paperwork and a few meetings, she was set to graduate with students 80 years younger than her. And she didn't have to take an exit exam -- she was grandfathered, or perhaps you could say, grandmothered in.
Bettie Grinnell, Galileo High School: "She educated all of her children and now it's her turn, and that really touched everybody who was around her when her son brought her in. It is time for her to get her diploma."
ABC7's Leslie Brinkley: "What are you going to do with that diploma when you get it?"
Josephine Belasco: "Frame it. Maybe a gold frame."
Eddie Belasco, son of 98-year-old graduate: "We're going to have dinner for her and write her a speech and we're just going to have a good time. It's a wonderful thing for her to do this at her age and I think she's a dynamic woman."
A cancer diagnosis last year resurrected her dream.
Eddie Belasco: "And here she is."
Leslie Brinkley: "Graduating from high school."
Eddie Belasco: "She won't give up."
Josephine Belasco: "I feel like I'm in a dream all the time now. Once that dream is all done, I'm happy, like I'm ready to go into the next world. I've done everything I wanted to do."
Josephine Dorothy Belasco graduates from high school this Wednesday afternoon.
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