At 94, She Gets High School Diploma, Plans New Career

“Age has never bothered me . . . only fools count their years,” Monica Berger said. Berger should know, she’s 94 and a recent high school graduate.

“If you don’t have goals, you sort of wobble around,” she said during an interview Friday at Walnut Retirement Manor in Anaheim where she lives.

Berger’s ultimate goal is to some day work with children. So, after hearing about an independent study program wherein high school dropouts are allowed to complete assignments, take tests and meet with teachers on a weekly basis to obtain a diploma, Berger set out to obtain that goal. She contacted Fullerton Union High School’s Continuing Education Department.

Once a week, Kit Roemmele, Berger’s teacher, would come to the home, review her assignments and administer tests.

“My teacher told me that she learned a lot while teaching me,” Berger said with a smile.

As a young woman, Berger worked as a governess for wealthy European families, an experience that helped her determine her current goal. Now that she has her high school diploma, she’s planning to obtain an Early Childhood Education certificate so that she might someday run a home for abused or neglected children.

Her favorite high school subject was arithmetic. Her love of numbers might have come from her business experience in owning and operating a successful beauty salon in the midst of the Great Depression and later when she and her husband owned a 32-unit apartment building in Long Beach.

Her family, including her son, John Goetz, 64, of Oxnard, three grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and one niece, attended her graduation ceremony earlier this month at Fullerton Union High School’s Plummer Auditorium.

Berger’s advice to other students is that “they should not push their ideals into the shadows, don’t strive for temporary wealth or gain but, strive for the ideal goals.”

“The true value of life lies not in the physical things but in what you gain in your soul.”

The Buena Park Rotary Club has named Myrna Capsuto as Vocational Teacher of the Year. Capsuto has taught office skills for the past 10 years at the North Orange County Regional Occupational Program at La Habra High School. She teaches office skills to the blind and invented a method of giving timed typing tests to the deaf. She is also one of three campus advisers to the La Habra High Chapter of the Future Business Leaders of America and has helped to raise funds with the chapter for Childrens Hospital of Orange County.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Bruce Beauchamp and volunteer Jeanne Dukes were named “Man and Woman of the Year” by the Garden Grove Chamber of Commerce. Beauchamp volunteers his time with the Garden Grove Girls Club and the Garden Grove Lions and Elks clubs.

Dukes, a former grand juror, volunteers as many as 40 hours per week to a variety of organizations and causes. She is a former president of the Grand Jurors Assn. of Orange County and president and secretary of the Artificial Kidney Foundation. She also served on the committee of the Orange County Health Planning Council and has beenchairman of special events for the Arthritis Foundation of Orange County.

Janice Billings, principal at Walker Junior High School in La Palma, has been selected as a member of the 18th IDEA Academy of Fellows summer program to be held at Claremont McKenna College in July. IDEA, the Institute for Development of Educational Activities, Inc., is a nonprofit foundation established in 1965 to encourage constructive change and excellence in elementary and secondary schools.