Never Too Late

In a family where no one had ever graduated from high school, the three adults would sit at the table at night and do their homework together--brother, sister and mother. Then two of them sat proudly in the audience, knowing their turn would come, to see the first diploma awarded to a relative.

Diana Gallardo, 21, was among the 65 adults to receive a high school equivalency diploma through the Chapman-Hettinga Education Center in Garden Grove.

Among the graduates Thursday evening were a recovering alcoholic, two sisters-in-law in their 40s who went back to school together, and a Vietnamese recording artist who has already started college.

Marching into the auditorium, some posed for pictures and waved boisterously to their families and friends. Others bit their lips and looked at their feet as tears slid down their faces.

Standing tall among them, Gallardo admitted that education hadn’t always meant so much to her. During her teens, she cut school so often that “I was too embarrassed to go back,” she said. Then she got pregnant and dropped out altogether--as her mother had done many years before.

“I’m so proud of her because I always tried to make her go to school when she was a kid,” said Gallardo’s mother, Maria Quintana, who is still studying for her diploma.

Both mother and daughter felt impelled to continue their education because of their children.

In Gallardo’s case it was her son George Anthony, who enthusiastically stood on his chair and applauded as she rose to give a graduation speech.

Gallardo didn’t want the family history of dropping out to continue with her son.

“My baby is going to be 3 next year,” she said. “He’s not in school yet, but I’m hoping when he gets there he won’t have to turn around and say, ‘Well, my mom didn’t finish so why should I?’ ”

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A few months after she entered the program, Gallardo talked her brother into joining. And Quintana said her children’s devotion to their education moved her to return to school.

“I tried to help them and let them know that I am going to be with them. If they want to study, I am going to study with them,” Quintana said of the learning process that has become a family affair.

It’s a practice Gallardo hopes the family will continue when she enrolls in Fullerton College.

In total, some 118 adults in Garden Grove will complete their high school requirements this year through programs at Chapman and the Lincoln Education Center. As many of them lined up for the graduation ceremony, awkwardly clutching their blue mortarboard caps to their heads, they said it was the encouragement of their families that motivated them to finally finish school.

Judy Caton, 52, left school when she was 17 to get married. “It seemed like the thing to do, until I was divorced at 19 with a young girl and no job,” she recalled.

Caton said she went back to school for her own peace of mind. Despite her straight-A record, she said she would have had trouble graduating without the help of her current husband.

A former math instructor, he helped her with her schoolwork to the point of accompanying her to class.

“I really struggled through the math,” she said. “My husband went to class with me. I feel very proud of that.”

Garden Grove offers two options for adult education, a traditional classroom setting and an independent study program in which students only attend school for about an hour a week to go over their assignments and receive lesson plans.

Students can stay in the school for as long as it takes to complete their remaining requirements.

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Many of the programs’ participants are single mothers, according to Peter Goetz, a popular teacher who many students said was instrumental in keeping them interested in attending school. Others, Goetz says, are drawn back to school because they find that a diploma is a requirement for most good jobs.

That’s what motivated Saul Sanchez, a 32-year-old inspector at an oil refinery, to earn his diploma. “When I left school I was young. I thought everything was easy,” he said. “After that, I realized you have to work for everything.”

Sanchez said it was difficult to study because he is so tired after a day of work. But his diligence paid off Thursday night, when he was surprised to receive a $100 academic honor award.

Caton recently moved upstate to Redding, but returned to graduate with her two friends, Carol and Jovita Bak, who are sisters-in-law.

Before the ceremony, as the three women helped each other adjust their caps, they talked about how they had struggled in high school.

“I’m dyslexic, and it was very hard,” Carol Bak said. “I hated it because I felt dumb.”

Not anymore. She was among the winners of special academic achievement awards Thursday night.