OAKLAND, Calif. — It’s never too late to earn your college degree. Just ask 94-year-old Hazel Soares.
The San Leandro woman was one of about 500 students to pick up diplomas Saturday during a commencement ceremony at Mills College, an Oakland liberal arts college for women that also offers coed graduate programs.
“It’s taken me quite a long time because I’ve had a busy life,” Soares said. “I’m finally achieving it, and it makes me feel really good.”
Soares, who has six children and 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is believed to be the world’s second-oldest person to graduate from college.
Nola Ochs of Kansas became the oldest when she graduated from Fort Hays State University three years ago at age 95, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Ochs, now 98, topped that academic feat Saturday when she received her master’s degree in liberal studies from Fort Hays.
Born in Richmond, Calif. in 1915, Soares said she had wanted to attend college after she graduated from Roosevelt High School in Oakland in 1932, but that was during the Great Depression.
“Unless you had some help, it would have been impossible to go to college,” Soares said. “However I never lost the desire to go.”
Soares married twice, raised six children and worked as a nurse and event organizer before she retired and decided to pursue a college education.
“We are really amazed and very proud of my mom,” said Regina Hungerford, Soares’ youngest child. “The biggest thing that we can all learn is that we’re never too old.”
At Saturday’s commencement, Soares was congratulated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who delivered the keynote speech.
Soares, an art history major, now hopes to be hired as a docent at a San Francisco Bay-area museum.
