Gurnee grandma gets diploma at 90

Depression-era woes forced her out of school

As a teenager during the Great Depression, Eleanor Benz, now 90, watched her parents struggle to provide for seven children.

In her senior year at Chicago Public Schools' Lake View High, Benz dropped out of school to help.

"It was turn your paycheck over, keep a couple of dollars for yourself. Then with getting married and raising kids, I never did go back."

Fifteen children, 54 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren later, last week she received the sacrificed diploma from Lake View along with a yearbook from her sophomore year, 1934, and her registration records from 1936 -- items discovered by Lake View's school secretary.

"I was overwhelmed by it all," Benz said.

Eleanor Benz, 90, received her high school diploma on May 30. Right, Benz at 18.

Born in Chicago on May 23, 1919, Benz was raised in the Lake View neighborhood. She worked for several years after leaving school, then married John F. Benz, a young printing apprentice, in 1941 before moving to Mundelein.

"I had 15 children within a span of 23 years, but I always had a book in my hands," Benz said.

She later went to night school for typing and bookkeeping, but still, no high school diploma. It was on the eve of her 90th birthday that her children learned what had always nagged their mother.

"One of my sisters was writing a paper about the Depression and (she) interviewed Mom," Benz' daughter, Laurie Harrington, said. "When she asked what Mom's greatest disappointment was, she answered, 'Having to quit school a half year before I would have graduated.' "

Her children contacted Lake View, reaching Karen Siciliano -- herself a 1961 Lake View graduate.

"The school secretary took this on as a mission," Harrington said.

"I thought, 'What a wonderful thing for these kids to try to grant their mother's wish'," Siciliano said. "I started searching the archives and finally found her in the 1934 yearbook. It turns out she was only a few months shy of graduation."

Apprised of the situation, the school's principal approved Benz' diploma. And because the 2009 class was graduating, there were extra caps and gowns around. One was sent -- with a 1936 tassel -- and a wooden replica of Lake View in the 1930s.

All were presented to Benz at her 90th birthday party on May 30.

"She put the cap on immediately," Harrington said.

"I was ecstatic," Benz said. "My diploma is dated Feb. 1, 1936, and signed by Olice Winter. He was the principal then. I feel blessed. Although, you know nowadays, even a high-school graduation isn't enough. You need to go to college."