NATIONAL BRIEFING / ILLINOIS

A 90-year-old suburban Chicago woman who dropped out of school to help her family during the Depression now has her high school diploma.

Eleanor Benz left Lake View High School in Chicago in 1936 during her senior year to take a job. In the following decades she moved to the suburb of Gurnee and had 15 children, resulting in 54 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren.

Benz attended night school for typing and bookkeeping, but she recently told one of her daughters that never completing high school was one of her greatest disappointments. Her children contacted Lake View, and the school approved her diploma. At her 90th birthday party, Benz’s family gave her the diploma and a 2009 gown and cap with a 1936 tassel.