DAVIS: Glen Rose ISD Superintendent Dr. Trig Overbo, left, hands Nancy Lewis Davis, 81, her diploma at commencement exercises on May 27, at the Glen Rose High School Auditorium Jay Hinton

GLEN ROSE — When Nancy Lewis Davis walked across the stage with her cane and sparkling Glen Rose-red sneakers to receive her high school diploma, her smile was a wide as Texas.

“I felt kind of like Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’,” she said. “I could tap my heels twice and get back home.”

She had finally finished what she started so many, many years ago.

Instead of graduating with her class in 1959, Davis, 81, graduated with the other 125 members of the graduating Class of 2022 at commencement exercises held May 27, 2022, at the Glen Rose High School Auditorium.

She now considers herself a 1959/2022 graduate of Glen Rose High School.

On March 19, 1959, just two months shy of graduation, Davis, 18, and her sister headed to Fort Worth. Davis eventually caught a bus to Lubbock where she would go to be with her boyfriend, Tommy Davis, a star athlete at Texas Tech. Her sister, Carmen, 16, headed to Oklahoma to get married.

Nancy and Tommy didn’t get married right away, and if they lived together, he could have lost his scholarship, she said. Instead, she lived with his brother and his wife while Tommy finished up, and they eventually got married. They have been together for more than 60 years.

“I came back on the night of my graduation, and I’m sitting outside with mother and daddy thinking, ‘I would have graduated tonight’,” she recalls.

Last month, Davis sat backstage on her “graduation” night, waiting her turn. Kelly Shackelford, principal at Glen Rose High School who was instrumental in helping her earn her diploma, addressed the Class of 2022, but it was well into the commencement.

“I watched all the proceedings, and then Mr. Shackelford got up and told my story,” she said. “When he said my name, I’d been sitting back there a good bit and my legs were stiff. I got up and thought, ‘oh, Lord, can I just cross the stage’.”

With the Class of 2022 standing in ovation behind her and 44 family and friends, including all her children and some of her grandchildren, in the audience, Glen Rose Superintendent Dr. Trig Overbo handed Davis her diploma and before she walked off, she asked him to turn her tassel.

“I waited all this time, but I made it, and it was a real rewarding experience,” she said.

She said her husband taught and coached high school for 44 years, and she was reminded nearly every year of what she didn’t have. Not having a diploma cost her a good job early in her time in Lubbock.

“As a coach’s wife, I was expected to go to graduation ceremonies,” she said. “I would go, and every time I would hear the pomp and circumstance song, as I refer to it. It was just something that stayed with me all through the years.”

In January, Davis made the New Year’s resolution to earn her high school diploma, and she got the ball rolling with a phone call to Shackelford.

“I knew I couldn’t accept her as a student, but I also knew from the determination in her voice that she wasn’t going to accept no for an answer,” Shackelford said during his speech.

Shackelford eventually called the Texas Education Agency to find out the graduation requirements back in 1959, and all Davis lacked was a communications class.

“I remember thinking there is no way she is going to do this, but I was hopeful because it would be a great story,” Shackelford said.

He also told her if she could get it done by the end of the year, he would invite her to walk the stage and get her diploma.

Davis accepted the challenge. Davis, with the help of her daughter, enrolled in the online class at Texas Tech University. Her grandson purchased her a laptop and got her all set up, and six weeks later she passed the class with a 96.115% average.

She said she used nine ballpoint pens and a “giant, fat” spiral notebook to write down all her assignments before typing them into her computer.

“I did all the work myself,” she said. “Submitting it was I needed help with.”

Some 63 years, six children and several grandchildren later, she received what she so very much longed for.

“There are no regrets, no regrets at all,” she said. “We we’ve had a really, really good life, but I did want to get that accomplished.”