At 91, Woman Lives and Learns : 6 Decades After Original College Days Were Cut Short, She Continues Studies

The year was 1917, and Adeline Skegrub was a fresh-faced teen-ager enjoying her first semester of higher education at a small Lutheran college in Minnesota.

Tragically, an emergency tonsillectomy, combined with the untimely passing of her father, a judge who died at the age of 42, put a quick end to the young woman’s academic dreams.

But she vowed that she would one day return to college to complete her studies. After six decades, she has finally kept that vow.

At age 79 and widowed, the former Adeline Skegrub--now Adeline Quam--went back to school, enrolling in music classes at Saddleback College just over 12 years ago.

Now 91, Quam, who lives alone and continues to take the bus to the college from her Dana Point home three times a week, looks back proudly at a decade of academic achievement during which she marched through three graduation ceremonies after earning associate of arts degrees in music, business administration and science.

“I was hesitant at first because of the generation gap,” Quam said during a break between classes last week. “But I was accepted by the students and the faculty, and there was no more fear and worry. There was no generation gap.

“I just forgot about my age and never dwelled on it,” she added. “I was just so eager to get back.”

To date, Quam has earned 132 units of college credit at Saddleback.

She was accepted as a junior into Cal State Fullerton, where she had hoped to earn a bachelor’s degree in music. However, “I couldn’t go to the university because of transportation problems,” she said with a trace of sadness. “I was disappointed, but it would have been quite a commute on the bus and a lot of early morning and night classes. I just couldn’t do it at my age.”

The limitations of advanced age are not something Quam easily accepts. She can’t hear as well as she used to and walks with a cane, but, characteristically, she refuses to use a wheelchair despite suffering from a painful edematous foot condition that has slowed her down considerably in recent years.

“Nothing keeps her away,” said music instructor Alvin Brightbill, who has known Quam for 10 years. “She’s very independent and gets around on her own. She just keeps plugging away at these classes. She’s always there and she does the work.

“She’s always been accepted by the other students and is treated just like everyone else,” Brightbill added. “For many of the younger students, she becomes just like a grandmother.”

Her classes have not always been easy, Quam says, but she has maintained a 2.72 grade-point average--slightly better than C-plus--while earning units in subjects such as political science, sociology, music, oceanography, history, speech, music and math.

“The one I worried about the most was the basic college math,” she said. “I got a C. But I found the rest interesting and easy. Advancing age does not retard the mind. Your body gets old, but not your mind.”

Quam’s academic career has been guided by her mentor and friend, Kathy Hodge, the college’s dean of continuing education.

“It’s been one of the joys of my career to watch her grow and go,” Hodge said. “The dedication and push that she has demonstrated is just uncommon. She’s so goal-oriented. If more younger students had the kind of energy, drive and sense of purpose as her, they would be very successful people.”

In the more than 60 years between her two college experiences, Quam led a full and busy life. Before her father, Albert Skegrub--a direct descendant of the first king of Norway--died in 1918 in the Spanish influenza epidemic, she promised him that that she would help her mother raise the family’s younger children.

Three years later, her sister Alice died in a smallpox epidemic, leaving Quam to care for Alice’s 6-day-old daughter. Quam raised the child as her own and throughout the years worked as a cook and a bookkeeper, and later owned and managed three beauty supply franchises.

Quam also worked as a U.S. Naval Intelligence operator during World War II, a position she qualified for after working as a telephone operator for Pacific Bell.

At age 39, she married Henry Quam. Her voice still cracks when she discusses his death caused by cancer in 1968.

“After three years, I was still grieving,” she said. “My lawyer made me snap out of it by telling me that there was still life out there and that I had to go on.”

Before deciding to return to school, Quam traveled the world, including tours of the Southwest Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, the Fiji Isles, Great Britain and France.

“I did the traveling that my husband and I had planned to do together,” she said sadly. “His death was the hardest thing I ever had to go through.”

Despite the heartaches, Quam regained the positive outlook taught to her by her parents, who she said advised her to always “display high courage.”

“A lot of people have remorse over not doing things in their lives and it makes them sick and leads to gloom and despair,” she said.

Since not finishing college was the one major piece of unfinished business in her life, Quam said she returned because she didn’t want to have any regrets.

“I’ve proven to myself that age doesn’t have to affect the mind, and I hope I’ve proven that to other people.” she said. “But I had to find that out for myself and coming back to college was the only way I could do it.”