While celebrating her 90th birthday last month at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford, N.H., during what her family had initially intended to be a surprise party, Annette F. Roberge turned the tables and unveiled a surprise of her own.
The mother of five, grandmother of 12, and great-grandmother of 15, who had graduated from Manchester’s Central High School in 1953, announced that she was about to graduate from Southern New Hampshire University with an associate’s degree in business administration.
“They kind of looked at me like, ‘What!?’’’ she recalled with a laugh in an interview reflecting on her whirlwind November.
Roberge received her degree at SNHU’s commencement ceremonies on Nov. 23, along with hearty applause, as President Lisa Marsh Ryerson recognized her as this year’s eldest graduate and praised her as an exemplar of resilience — a spotlight that Roberge said caught her by surprise.
“I really didn’t expect all this notoriety. … I thought I was just going to go, get my diploma, say hooray to me, and that was it,’’ she said. “But, boy, that was far from what happened.’’
Roberge first began pursuing a bachelor’s degree in 1972 after her husband, Edmund E. Roberge, died in Vietnam while serving with the US Army. She used benefits from the G.I. Bill to enroll at the nonprofit institution, which was known then as New Hampshire College.
But after several years of night and weekend classes, the duties of raising five kids led her to defer her studies.
“I needed to be there for whatever they needed,’’ she said.
Roberge said she thought several times over the years about the prospect of going back to class. In 2017, she reengaged with the academic team at her former school — which had changed its name in 2001 to SNHU — but health issues got in the way of her plans. Then the COVID-19 pandemic prompted her to delay further, according to her daughter, Karen L. Roberge.
But as her milestone birthday approached this fall, Annette Roberge got in touch with SNHU again to see how many more credits she would need to finish her bachelor’s degree. They told her she had actually already earned enough for an associate’s degree, and they invited her to don a cap and gown.
Roberge, who said she was still “on Cloud 9 two days after graduation, advised others to hold out hope in their long-deferred aspirations.
“Don’t give up on your dream,’’ she said.
Roberge retired nearly two decades ago and doesn’t plan to head back to work anytime soon, but she still has her eye on that bachelor’s degree. She said she’ll find out in January how many more credits she would need to achieve that next goal.
“You’re never, never too old to learn,’’ she said, “and if you learn, it widens your own horizon of things, your own knowledge of what’s going on in the world. … It makes a better world for you and of those around you.’’
More than 26,000 students were eligible to graduate from SNHU last month.. The school, which has a campus in Manchester, says it serves more than 225,000 learners, the vast majority of them online.
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.
