It’s never too old to graduate.
A New Jersey man who was unable to graduate during the 1930s because his single mother was too poor to pay his high school tuition received his diploma on March 19, The Washington Post reported.
Merrill Pittman Cooper, 101, of Union, New Jersey, was one of the first Black trolley car drivers in Philadelphia and was a union leader in the city, the newspaper reported. The only gap in his long, successful career was a high school diploma.
Cooper was forced to drop out of school in 1938 after his junior year at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a segregated boarding school founded in 1867 that originally educated formerly enslaved children, the Post reported.
According to a news release from Jefferson County Schools, Cooper studied college preparatory courses in Latin, biology, history, English, and mathematics at Storer.
Cooper’s mother, a live-in housekeeper, was unable to afford the final tuition payment for his senior year, the Post reported. Cooper and Nancy Washington moved to Philadelphia so she could be near family members, according to WJLA-TV.
“She worked so hard, and it all became so difficult that I just decided it would be best to give up continuing at the school,” Cooper told the Post.
According to online records, Cooper was born Feb. 9, 1921, in Kearneysville, West Virginia. After leaving high school, Cooper took a job with Victory Cleaners And Dyers Co., in Philadelphia, online records show. He also worked at a women’s apparel store, then was hired in 1945 as a city trolley car operator, the Post reported.
Cooper eventually became secretary-treasurer, and later vice president and president, for Transport Workers Union Local 234, the Philadelphia Daily News reported. He helped integrate trolley operators, and when those vehicles were phased out years later, Cooper became a bus driver, according to the Post.
My latest piece for The Post: Merrill Pittman Cooper always wished he’d been able to get a high school diploma. Now he finally has one — at age 101. ❤️ @washingtonpost https://t.co/qKSvYPUF7W
— Cathy Free (@cathyjfree) March 26, 2022
In a 1979 article, The Philadelphia Inquirer described Cooper as “a riveting Sunday preacher” in public forums, “mixing sarcasm and rhetorical flair in spellbinding quantities.”
In 2018, Cooper visited his former high school and expressed regret about not graduating, according to the news release from Jefferson County Schools.
“As time went on, I thought it was probably too late, so I put it behind me and made the best of the situation,” Cooper told the Post. “I got so involved in working and making a living that my dreams went out the window.”
Cooper’s relatives wanted that dream to come true. They reached out to Jefferson County school officials, who worked with the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, the Storer College National Alumni Association and the West Virginia Department of Education, to honor Cooper.
“Jefferson County Schools is committed to helping every student, young or old, fulfill their dreams,” Jefferson County Schools superintendent Bondy Shay Gibson-Learn said in a statement. “For Mr. Cooper, that meant receiving a high school diploma. We are honored to help make that dream a reality.”
“I never imagined that anything like this could happen,” Cooper told the Post about his diploma. “I can’t think of a happier day.
“Even though it took me a while, I’m really happy to finally have it.”
©2022 Cox Media Group
