At 81, Grad Majors in Lifelong Learning

As a young Navy wife during the 1940s, Amy Elizabeth Kirkland Thomas began taking college courses to keep busy while her husband was at sea.

She gradually built up credits while working full time as a nursing assistant, earning a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary education in 1974.

But one wasn’t enough.

On May 21, two days after her 81st birthday, Thomas received her fifth academic degree from Norfolk State University, which officials believe is a school record. The school did not know whether she is the oldest graduate.

Thomas is getting a bachelor’s in sociology with an emphasis in gerontology. Professors describe her as a good student.

School “keeps me going, and it keeps me among people,” Thomas said in an interview in her red-brick home a mile from the university.

“I love to communicate. I’m not going to sit in the house and just watch TV. I don’t think you should stop learning. Enjoy the adventure.”

Thomas first attended NSU when it was known as the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College, majoring in elementary education in 1946.

After her first degree came three associate, or two-year, degrees, in tailoring, upholstery and aging. Smiling, she shows visitors a formal chair that she reupholstered for a class project. It sits in the front hall of her home, veiled in plastic.

In 1995 she returned to NSU and completed 18 hours toward a master of arts degree in gerontology. When the program was discontinued, Thomas changed her major to sociology and decided to pursue a second bachelor’s degree.

Along the way, Thomas said she has enjoyed learning about art, literature, poetry, black history and computers.

Thomas’ love of learning began with her family in Georgia, where she grew up the seventh of nine siblings. Her father was a Baptist minister who also taught religion in college.

She lived in Fitzgerald, Valdosta and Savannah and attended Savannah Industrial College, now Savannah State University, for one year before joining the Army in 1943. “I wanted to see the world,” said Thomas, who served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, becoming a nursing assistant.

She considered making the Army a career but returned home to be with her mother when her father died.

While traveling home on the train she met a sailor, John Thomas. They fell in love and have been married for 54 years. A few months after their 1946 wedding, they moved to Norfolk, where her mother-in-law lived.

Thomas got a job as a nursing assistant at the naval hospital in Portsmouth in December 1947 and worked there until her retirement in June 1973. She took on a lot of late shifts so she could attend college courses during the day.

“It wasn’t easy. Life is not easy when you are trying to accomplish something worthwhile,” Thomas said. “I just couldn’t sit and wait for my husband to come home from the sea. Women should always be on the move, anyway.”

Thomas also credits her faith with giving her the strength to continuing pursuing higher education all these years.

“If you try, you will accomplish, but you have to have faith,” she said. “I’m just pleased the Lord has been behind me thus far.”

Thomas plans to take a break this summer--except from studying her Bible--while she decides what course or degree to pursue next.

Though she didn’t have any children of her own, Thomas helped rear three nephews and a niece, all of whom pursued some form of higher education.

Thomas hesitates to call herself a role model, but she’s that and more, said Joyce Foster, her academic advisor.

“She’s a lady of what we call Southern hospitality,” said Foster, an assistant professor of sociology. “The students just receive her. They share their problems with her. She’s always there to be the motivational second mom for so many.”

Foster was Thomas’ classmate in the 1960s.

“So many degrees would not have been received if she had not been there to motivate students,” Foster said. “Amy Thomas is a special little lady.”