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99-year-old Audrey Crabtree graduates from high school

99-year-old Audrey Crabtree graduates from high school

Audrey Crabtree left school in 1931 just one credit short of graduating.

This week, more than 80 years after dropping out to tend to a diving injury and to care for her sick grandmother, the 99-year-old Iowa woman finally graduated from high school.

Crabtree received an honorary diploma for her time at Waterloo East High School in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

"And I feel so much smarter," she said at the ceremony held during an education board meeting.

Crabtree was just a credit short of graduating when she hurt herself in a swimming accident in her senior year. She missed "a lot of school" while suffering from whiplash.

Returning to school the next year would have required her to put off marrying her high-school sweetheart, Chuck Gerdes. She chose marriage.

The couple wed and had two children. Crabtree worked at a flower shop, then purchased that shop with her husband in 1957. Her husband died of a heart attack two months after they became business owners.

Crabtree operated that flower shop, Flowers by Audrey, for 28 years. She outlived three husbands and has five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

"I wouldn't advise anyone to drop out," she said. "I just have to say in my life the Lord has been so good."

"She had voiced quite a while back the one regret she had in life was that she never had gotten her diploma," Shelley Hoffman, Crabtree's granddaughter, told the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier.

In July, Hoffman contacted Crabtree's old school to arrange a diploma ceremony.

On September 23, family and friends watched as the current principal of East High handed Crabtree her diploma, along with her last report card and memorabilia from her time at the school. She also received more than 100 handmade graduation cards from middle school students.

"I am amazed and I am more amazed at all these people," said Crabtree at the event. "I didn’t know I was so important."

"I don't feel worthy, but it was really...an inspiration to me and I'm having a hard time keeping my tears back," she said.

Crabtree plans to show off her new diploma at her retirement home, but insists the piece of paper won't change her.

"My writing was illegible and my spelling was original and I don't think graduating from high school would have made a difference in that area," she told KWWL.

Crabtree's family is planning a big party for her 100th birthday next year.