Mary Thomas got her GED late last year.

When her name was called during the commencement ceremony at MUW, she set out across the stage with the help of a walker. She is 88 years old, after all.

By the time she reached the other side, stooped and smiling, she was holding a diploma. In her blue cap and gown there in Parkinson Hall, she raised her thin hand into the air. She was proud of herself. It was something she had always wanted. For a long time she thought it would never happen.

Life just would not cooperate.

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She never knew her father and her mother died before she was 5. Then the sister raising her was murdered. She ended up in Ohio with an aunt who thought she was not smart enough for school.

When she was 15 her aunt sent her to a railroad job, which she hated. She got a job at a factory next, sweeping floors. She hated that just as much.

She began working for a hotel chain that transferred her from places like Philadelphia to Connecticut to New Jersey. Years passed. She never felt fulfilled.

She wound up in Florida, where she had a pen pal from Columbus named Johnie Thomas Sr. In 1987, she married him, moved to Columbus and retired. Finally, she felt happy.

The only thing nagging was the fact that she never finished school. Her husband urged her to get her GED. But he got sick and she devoted herself to his care until the day in 2011 when he died. Then life got quiet.

She filled the silence with GED classes at the Greater Columbus Learning Center on Military Road. She was older than her classmates by decades and decades. The computer classes were hard. The math classes were harder. She stuck with it, though, and never thought of quitting.

Not too long ago she was asked what kept her going. Nothing much, she said, just her faith and wanting to graduate.

On Dec. 19, with roughly 30 other people young enough to be her great-grandchildren, she did just that.

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She lives alone in public housing on Avenue B. On her wall, she keeps two pictures of her late husband’s grave and beneath those pictures she has a chair where she sits a lot and knits. Beside her feet is a pile of notebooks full of her life story that she is writing.

Most people who pursue a GED do so to get a step up in the world and expand possibilities. How does she plan on using hers?

“I’m just going to nurse it,” Mary Thomas said, sitting in her chair, hugging her diploma tight across her chest. “It’s something I just look at. Took me long enough.

“I’m going to sit here and enjoy it.”

William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.