Decorative marriage certificate

Senior's GED takes the cake -- Certificate means the world to former

WASHINGTON - For more than a half century, 73-year-old Donna Alt has regretted going through life without a high school diploma.

Last month, the greatgrandmother of eight received her GED.

"The nicest letters in the world - GED - if you don't have a high school diploma," said Alt, proudly showing her certificate that was soon to go into a frame.

For years she attended the graduations of her children and grandchildren

"When they played that music, I would start bawling," she said.

The graduation a year ago of grandson Shane Yazujian and granddaughter Nichole Schertz got her thinking about finishing what she started in the 1940s.

"At their graduation, I decided then to go back to school," she said.

"She got on the phone and called ICC," said Alt's daughter, Teresa Yazujian. "I don't know how many times she called to make sure she was in the class."

Alt needed to take a placement test at ICC, Yazujian said.

"I got out there and she was sitting in the room," Yazujian said.

Alt was concerned about how to use the answer sheet.

"She's never seen a bubble sheet, an answer sheet where you fill in the circles A, B, C, D for the answer," Yazujian said. "She scored real low on the placement test."

But the score was of no concern. Alt was only interested in making it into the class.

"She could hardly wait," Yazujian said. "I've been teaching 25 years, and I've never seen anyone work so hard. She looked forward to class."

Yazujian was her mother's tutor.

"When I got stuck with my homework, I'd call Teresa," Alt said.

But there was a day when Yazujian thought she had pushed her student too far. The two had been working a couple hours and Yazujian saw tears in her mother's eyes. But then Alt smiled and told her daughter, "I just love this."

It was then Yazujian realized her love of learning came from her mother.

Alt took her GED test on Dec. 13 and 14 and on Dec. 15 was on a plane to Virginia to visit her daughter and son-inlaw, Kathryn and Jim Ogborn and their family. Before leaving, she had told her granddaughter, Mandi Peacher, who lives with her, when the envelope arrived containing the test results, "Call Aunt Teresa and have her open it and call me."

Not having heard that conversation, Yazujian "threw it into an envelope" and sent it to her mother in Virginia.

"She worked too hard for someone else to open it," she said.

Alt was concerned about the math portion: "I worked so many hours on my math; I wanted to nail that."

She did.

"I passed everything but the essay part, but I had to do the reading and writing part again," she said.

There was no giving up.

"I had such a hunger for this GED," she said.

When it came time for the repeat test, her essay topic was, "If you could spend a day with anyone, who would it be?"

"That was a no-brainer," said Alt, who wrote about her husband, Bob, who died Nov. 9, 1980.

This time around, Alt passed the test.

"I said, 'Mom, we're going to have a blowout graduation party," Yazujian said.

And that's exactly what they did. The party was delayed until July 11 to accommodate a visit from Ogborn and her husband and a home visit from Shane Yazujian, who is in the military.

Alt vividly remembers where this journey began. At 16, the former Pekin resident had to quit school at the start of her junior year to take a job at Larkin's Bakery to help her mother support her five younger siblings.

"My mother was working, but that wasn't enough to put food on the table," she said.

Needing more money, she soon moved to a job at a grocery store.

"It was important that I earn as much as I could," she said.

When her siblings were grown, Alt started a life of her own. She married a New York transplant and settled in Washington.

Alt continued to work outside the home for her first few years of marriage, and then the children began to arrive - five in five years. When the youngest was 2, she sent away for a book on cake decorating.

She developed an appreciation for cake decorating when she worked for the bakery, but despite the owner's offer to send her to school to learn the art, she refused "because I had to make more money."

Her cake decorating grew into a home-based business. One day, she recalled, "I had cakes everywhere in the house but the bathroom."

That may have been the incentive for her husband to construct a building in the back yard for a shop. The first cake was baked in The Cake Box on Dec. 2, 1972. She continued to create decorative cakes until her retirement from the business on Oct. 26, 1995.

Knowing Alt would need something to keep her active in retirement, "I asked her to volunteer in my classroom," said Yazujian, who teaches sixth grade at Eureka Middle School. "And she volunteered in another classroom."

"Grandma" to the students, Alt said she received two graduation announcements this year from students she worked with at Eureka.

Alt moved from the classroom to volunteering at the Church Mouse in Peoria, and she is Christian Service chairman at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, where she was on the church council.

Her kids also remember her as a Scout leader, youth leader and room mother.

"That's what people should do - be involved in their children's activities," Alt said.

Now it was the children's turn. All five were present for Alt's graduation party, as were most of her grandchildren and her four surviving siblings.

The very special graduation cake was created by Yazujian, the only one to inherit her mother's interest in cake decorating.

With school starting again in just over a month, is Alt, with GED in hand, ready to go on to college? She sighs a sign of relief to have the studying behind her, but doesn't say no. After all, her twice a week trips to ICC to study for her GED was her second tour on campus. The first time around she was the teacher - teaching cake decorating for 5 1/2 years.