Lula Mae Johnson has spent six years working toward her diploma. She sat with her husband Leon at home Wednesday. (ESSDRAS M SUAREZ/GLOBE STAFF)
At 68, a determined student to graduate
Lula Mae Johnson has spent six years working toward her diploma. She sat with her husband Leon at home Wednesday. (ESSDRAS M SUAREZ/GLOBE STAFF)
Fifty years ago this month, Lula Mae Johnson dropped out of her rural South Carolina high school.
She was a mediocre student, kept home twice a week to work on her family's farm, spreading manure over the cotton fields with a pitchfork. She was promoted to the 12th grade, but with plans to marry over the summer, she believed she was too grown up for high school.
For decades she regretted leaving and disappointing her parents, sharecroppers who never made it past grade school.
"I always knew I needed an education, because I had a desire to do better in my life," said Johnson, who wanted to pursue a law degree after witnessing her parents fight multiple legal battles to keep their property.
Tonight, the 68-year-old great-grandmother with a silver bob and wire-rimmed spectacles will become the oldest Boston high school graduate. She and more than three dozen students, most in their 20s and 30s, will cross the stage of the historic Faneuil Hall and earn a bona fide diploma from Boston Central Adult High School.
Looking on from rows of wooden chairs will be her husband Leon, the man she married at 19; their four daughters, seven grandchildren, great grandson, and more than a dozen friends.
"I feel I was the first one that caused her to drop out, so it would only be right to see her finish," said Leon Johnson, also a high school dropout who drove his wife from their Mattapan home to class daily. "I'm relieved that she finally got through school."
Lula Mae Johnson has spent the last six years working toward her diploma. Refusing to settle for a GED - "Somehow that didn't ring right with me," she said - she attended classes at adult schools in Roxbury and South Boston.
Her classmates were mostly single mothers and other teenagers who had recently dropped out, youngsters who called her Ms. Lula. They marveled that she never missed class, not even during snowstorms. After juggling school and farmwork as a child, Johnson said that returning to class was a privilege. "Now, no matter what I'm doing, doesn't matter what weather it is, I am there," she said.
She and her husband made sure that all five of their children finished high school. After all, the couple had scrimped to afford one-way bus tickets to Boston in 1959 so their future children would have access to a better education.
Leon Johnson got a job cleaning cars at a Chevy dealer. Lula Mae Johnson worked at a Roxbury laundromat. School weighed on her mind, but she knew she could not take classes, work, and raise a family. She worked nights as a nurse's assistant for nearly 30 years before running her own day-care center for eight.Continued...
She hit a wall six years ago when she said the state rejected her application to expand her day-care center because she did not have a high school diploma.
"I decided it was time to close it up and get going, because my children were grown," she said. "I needed to show that I was able to finish high school, no matter how long it would take."
But she struggled, especially with writing and math. She had to learn algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, subjects that had been foreign to her. Even worse was the MCAS, which adult students have been required to pass to earn a diploma since 2006. Johnson passed the English exam on her second try; she could not pass the math test even after three attempts.
"It was discouraging to come so close and not get there," she said.
She opted for an alternative path: Some adult students can choose to demonstrate competency by submitting a portfolio of work. She handed in 150 pages of math work, attending school on Saturdays to get it done. For each problem she got wrong, she had to do six more.
Last Friday, while she and her husband were in an Orlando hotel room, she received a call from Lisa Patrick, assistant director of Boston's adult education department. Her portfolio had been approved by the state, and she would be allowed to graduate.
"It's a touching thing to see somebody that determined," Patrick said. "She should be a lot of inspiration for students who, as she calls it, stopped out of school. No one can ever say, 'I'm too old to do this.' "
Today, Johnson plans to get her hair and nails done and treat herself to an hourlong massage before she dons her royal blue graduation gown and cap with golden tassels. She hopes to begin paralegal courses this summer at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and go on to law school.
School, though, is "not what the top of my list is all about," said Johnson, a Jehovah's Witness. "The top of my list is to please the Creator." Still, she said, in her prayers throughout the day, "I pray that I be successful and go on through to finish whatever I start."
Tracy Jan can be reached at .
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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