97-year-old finally gets her high school diploma

After years of waiting, 97-year-old Margaret Bekema finally received her high school diploma.

Last week, Catholic Central High School principal Greg Deja presented Bekema with an official honourary diploma at Yorkshire and Stonebridge Manor senior community in Walker, Michigan, USA Today reports.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Bekema said tearing up while wearing her graduation cap and receiving her long awaited diploma, Mlive reports.

Bekema was a former student at the Catholic Central High School back in 1932 but was forced to drop out in order to take care of her three younger siblings and her mother, who was sick with cancer, the news outlet reports.

At 17-years-old, Bekema was left heart-broken as she wouldn’t be able to graduate with her class of 1936.

“I had to quit school to take over the family. It was hard, you have no idea how hard that was. I loved high school and I had lots of friends,” Bekema told Mlive.

After her mom died, she helped the armed forces during World War II by doing some clerical work and eventually became a preschool teacher, USA Today reports.

One of Bekema’s children, Gerri Smith, told Mlive that her mother always regretted not graduating high school but was the “type of person that whatever life hands her, she just deals with it very graciously.”

Her diploma was touchingly dated the year Bekema would have graduated in 1936 and she also became the latest member of the school’s alumni association.