85-Year-Old CSU East Bay Grad May End Up Homeless
- June 9, 2010
By John Ramos, CBS-5 Reporter
The campus of 麻豆传媒社区入口 is quieting down. The last finals are being taken and graduates are thinking about what lies ahead.
But this isn't a graduation story. It's a story about the true value of education. Not in dollars and cents or future earning potential, but what it can actually mean for a person's life. And that brings us to the story of Ida Cotton.
"I was always interested in reading, knowing about more than I did know," she said.
Cotton is 85 years old. She raised 5 kids, worked hard all her life. But she always loved to learn and in her late 70s she got serious about school and went back to college. On Saturday, she will graduate with a master's degree.
"The more you learn, the more you're going to know. So since then, I have wanted to learn as much as I could about everything," Cotton said.
Miss Ida, as she's known around campus, is hoping her degree in gerontology will lead to some kind of counseling job. But Cotton said she really did it because she just loves to learn.
"You never learn too much. Because there's always something happening. This is a changing world," Cotton said.
But there's a twist to this story, and it's not a happy one because Ida Cotton has been living in campus housing for the past 3 years. And on Saturday when she graduates, just like every other student on campus, she's going to have to get out. Cotton has no family to live with in the area. She has no money. Ida has no place to go.
Dr. Sally Murphy, Cotton's academic advisor, is desperately trying to find a place for her to live.
"A little efficiency apartment, or a place where she's safe. Hopefully in the Hayward area because she knows an awful lot of people around here," Murphy said.
Murphy is working to postpone Ida's eviction and she is worried about the possibility of her becoming homeless. But as Ida works on her Master's thesis, the handwritten story of her life, she doesn't seem too concerned about her fate.
"I'm visually impaired, hearing impaired, mobile impaired, but then the brain's still working. So I want to learn as much as I can," she said.