Reunion to remember
Mary Edith Thompson Stewart, center, receives her new high school diploma from Principal Patrick Patterson and classmate Mary Ellen Holmes during the Eva School reunion on July 17.
One of the most important things in Mary Edith Thompson Stewart’s life was her education.
The 1961 graduate of Eva School, however, had no way to prove that she had completed that phase of her life because she lost her high school diploma in a house fire just one year after her graduation.
“I never realized how important that was to me until I lost it in our house fire,” Stewart said. “When it happened, all my mother had time to do was grab what was sitting on the table by the door. Fortunately, she was able to save my class picture, but I just wasn’t able to get my diploma.”
She tried for awhile to get a replacement, but after awhile she gave up hope of ever getting it back.
Luckily, she has a friend named Betty Hogan. Her longtime friend spearheaded a project to give Stewart the surpise of her life.
Current Eva School principal Patrick Patterson presented Stewart with a replica diploma at her 50th class reunion on July 17 at her alma mater.
“I just didn’t know what to say,” Stewart said. “I had no idea that they had been working on this.
“When Mr. Patterson said something about a member of the Class of ‘61 and a house fire, I perked up a little. I was thinking to myself, who else in my class had a house fire. Then as he kept talking, I knew he was talking about me.”
Patterson called Stewart up to the front and presented her with a framed diploma.
Hogan said Stewart always talked about her high school diploma and how she lost it in the fire.
“You can tell it meant a lot to her,” Hogan said. “I always remember her talking about missing her diploma. So I wanted to do something about it.”
So she approached Patterson to see if they could get a replica diploma. While he didn’t think it was possible to get one exactly like the rest of the Class of 1961, Patterson believed they could use another person’s diploma to give her a replica of the one she lost in the fire.
Hogan said Patterson and Eva School art teacher Dennis Bricknell used the diploma from Stewart’s classmate, Mary Ellen Holmes, to create Stewart’s diploma.
“They used the ‘Mary E’ Mary Ellen’s diploma and then copied other letters in the diploma to spell ‘Mary Edith Thompson’ on the diploma,” Hogan said. “It also had the signatures of both the principal then and the school superintendent. I don’t know how (Patterson and Bricknell) did it, but you can’t tell the difference between the replica and the original.”
Thompson said she hasn’t figured out where she’s going to put it in her house.
“I may buy an easel to put it on,” Thompson said.
She said she appreciated what Hogan and the rest of them did for her, especially on July 17. Stewart said that is a tough weekend because it would have been she and her husband’s 40th anniversary on July 16 and her husband died the day after their 30th anniversary. It was also her late mother’s birthday.
“I almost didn’t go to the reunion,” Stewart said. “Betty kind of asked me to go. I didn’t know why, but I went anyway.. That was probably the best day of my life. I just can’t thank them enough for what they did.”
