When Winlock resident Barbara Bishop walked up to receive her high school diploma at 85 years old, she didn’t expect to be greeted with a standing ovation.
Classmates and attendees cheered as Bishop walked down the aisle, diploma in hand, during the Centralia College commencement ceremony on Wednesday, June 18.
Bishop quit the ninth grade when her father was injured in a logging accident to help out her family as the oldest girl of eight children. A few years later, she married her husband, Woody.
When she tried to go back to high school at 16, the school’s superintendent told her that they didn’t allow married women in school.
In 2023, Bishop lost her husband, Woody Bishop, to a decade-long battle with dementia after 67 years of marriage. She began looking for ways to stay busy.
“I just miss him being here. I never did anything without him, you know. It’s hard for me to make a decision,” Bishop told The Chronicle in an interview. “I was very lonely and I needed something to do.”
Bishop was encouraged to go back to school by her neighbors and family. Her first thought was that she was too old.
Her neighbor, Wendy Neal, who worked at the college, took her to sign up for the high school diploma program. She was enrolled in classes by September 2024.
Known as the “grandma” in her classes at Centralia College, she would laugh with students about her old school methods of doing things, but was praised for her writing skills.
When Bishop was struggling in a class, particularly in math, her neighbors, including Neal, would come over to help.
“I have been given this great opportunity to do something that I never thought possible: graduating from high school. I thought it would never happen,” Bishop said.
“I thought I was too old and a grandmother, but I decided to try. I am so glad I did.”
After the graduation ceremony, she was greeted excitedly by the same neighbors and family members who encouraged her along the way.
Bishop continues to fill her time with genealogy work on her family in an office space at her home dedicated to learning and preserving the family's history.
When asked what her younger self would think of her now, Bishop said, “You finally made it. You finally did it.”
