2023年6月7日

Octogenarian completes master’s degree at Northwest after career in technology field

As 网上赌博网站十大排行’s newest graduates crossed the commencement stage at Bearcat Stadium in May, it was 戈登 Hill who drew the loudest applause and a standing ovation from people in the crowd that day.

戈登, 85岁时, 网上赌博网站十大排行今年春天最年长的毕业生是谁, earning a Master of Arts degree in English – just 60 years after completing a bachelor’s degree at 密苏里-哥伦比亚大学.

“我有很多大学的成绩单,希尔惊叹道, 西北清单, 密苏里-哥伦比亚大学, 新墨西哥州立大学, the University of Mississippi and the University of South Florida as places where he has enrolled in coursework.

1956年从玛丽维尔高中毕业后, 戈登 tried taking a couple summer courses at Northwest. He concedes he did not do well, however, and instead joined the Air Force. He served for four years and then returned to Northwest for one semester in the fall of 1960 before opting to pursue a degree in engineering at the University of Missouri.

Through all of it, 戈登’s wife, Frances, had been at his side. 他们结婚63年, exchanging their vows in 1957 – two years after they “got together” as juniors at Maryville High School.

The couple raised two children and had been inseparable as they traversed the country and 戈登 worked a variety of jobs. In 2020, they returned to northwest Missouri to be 关闭r to their daughter and other family members. 不幸的是, Frances’s Parkinson's disease accelerated and she died that May, 就在他们搬家三个月后.

“But we had a good time in that three months,戈登说。. “网上赌博网站十大排行要去见人，做事情.”

Afterward, 戈登 felt a hole in his life and needed something to occupy his time.

“没有她，我的生活毫无意义，”他说. “我需要填补我生命中的那个空洞. I’ve always taken classes at universities where we’ve lived every now and then, 但我决定让它更正式, and seeking a master’s was a way of really filling up my life.”

As he reflected on his graduate coursework at Northwest as well as the joy he experienced in sharing his writing with faculty and classmates, 戈登说, “这是非凡的. 我不知道我有多少教授. I took the 10 classes and probably had six or seven different professors, 但每节课都不一样. What I got was a broad spectrum of literature – and not only the reading but the discussing and then also the writing.”

戈登 says he’s been a writer throughout his life and career. He notes with pride that he studied journalism at Maryville High School under the tutelage of local icon Opal Eckert. Today he authors a weekly column that appears in the Nodaway News Leader, and he is a frequent contributor to the Maryville Forum.

他自称是“计算机技术极客”,” 戈登 graduated from the University of Missouri in 1963 with his bachelor’s degree in engineering. 在那之后的很多年, he worked stints at several small companies – some multiple times – and often wrote instructions in a computing field that was just beginning to take off. 

“Jobs were always looking for me – because I was in the computer field in the early ’60s,戈登说。. “全是真空管、纸带和穿孔卡片. I started as a technician and then became an engineer and then became a salesman of scientific computers.”

In 1974, he ended up as a project manager at a company in Florida and stayed there for 11 years. 但当该公司的一款产品失败时, 戈登 was out of a job and – with a nudge from a friend – launched a consulting firm. 大约六个月后, he joined a seminar company for which he developed and led technical seminars for 15 years. 戈登估计他训练了超过5个,000 people on how to design and develop computer networks before he retired in 2001 at age 63.

在退休后, 戈登开始做志愿者, first offering encouragement to inmates at a juvenile detention center and then as a docent with Frances at the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in New Mexico. 在那里, 戈登 led guided tours and saw himself evolving into more of a storyteller than a technical writer.

The Hills were docents at the Gila Cliff Dwellings for four seasons until Frances’s health began deteriorating and she could no longer walk the trails, 促使他们搬回玛丽维尔.

就在他从网上赌博网站十大排行毕业的那天, his daughter as well as siblings and extended family who came from St. 路易, Florida and Oklahoma were in the crowd watching from the Bearcat Stadium grandstand and cheering him on.

He noticed a lot of people calling his achievement “a big deal,” but he shrugged off that notion.

“It’s not a big deal for me because it’s what I wanted to do next, and I think that successful people do what they want to do next,他说.