55 years later, Williams finally gets his college diploma

After waiting 55 years, 81-year-old Winthrop “Bill” Williams received his diploma from Purdue University on May 9 during a ceremony that touched his heart. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

Everyone in the audience had been asked to hold their applause until the last graduate received his diploma—a request that might have been honored if Winthrop “Bill” Williams wasn’t the first person to cross the stage.

As his daughter pushed the 81-year-old Williams in a wheelchair, a roar of cheers and applause swelled for the man who had waited 55 years to receive his diploma from Purdue University.

The response overwhelmed the member of St. Simon the Apostle Parish in Indianapolis. Indeed, only one thing could have been better for Williams—if his wife of 46 years, Charity Ann, had been by his side, too. Instead, Williams carried a picture of the love of his life. She had died three years ago.

“I thought of her always,” Williams recalled about the graduation ceremony on May 9. “When that crowd of people stood up and applauded, I didn’t know what to think. It was very emotional. It was just the most thrilling thing to be on that stage.”

Actually, he had crossed a Purdue stage on graduation day once before—back in 1953, the year he thought he had graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. But when he opened his diploma on May 31, 1953, there was a blank piece of paper inside. He was told that he had one more required course to take. By then, he already had a job lined up. So he didn’t take the course and he didn’t look back until a few months ago when he wondered what he needed to do to earn his diploma.

“I called my daughter a couple months ago,” Williams recalled. “I thought I was a couple college credits short and I could take the classes at IUPUI [Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis] if I had to. She called Purdue. They dug up my records and found out I should have had my degree back then. I had one course that was almost exactly like the required course. They gave me credit for it.”

So Purdue arranged for Williams to receive his diploma on May 9. He came to the West Lafayette campus with his two children, Laurie Yeary and Daniel Williams. Because the elder Williams has difficulty walking long distances, university officials gave him the use of a wheelchair, placed him on stage for the ceremony and let him receive his diploma first.

“That piece of paper didn’t make him smarter, but it did make him stand up taller,” his daughter said. “He keeps saying over and over, ‘You’ll never know how much I appreciate this, how much this means to me.’

“My mother’s picture and that piece of paper—if there was a fire, those are the two things he would grab.”

Receiving his college diploma now ranks among the highlights of Williams’ life, including his marriage, the adoption of their two children and his service to his country during World War II.

“It was just the most thrilling thing,” he said about the graduation ceremony.

“It would have never happened that way 55 years ago.” †