YEREVAN, JULY 30, ARMENPRESS. Mary Moniz, 100-year-old resident of Fall River, Massachusetts, received a high school diploma. She was born to a family of Azorean immigrants on the same day World War I started - July 28, 1914. As reports “Armenpress”, in reference to the international media, in 1930, Moniz, who had just completed her second year at school, had to leave it. She left not by her own choice but because her family decided to return to the Azores. That was a year after the Great Depression began. Her father decided to move because he saw that economic opportunity was lacking in the U.S., and realized they had more land and more family on the island of São Miguel.

Moniz returned to the United States in 1949, but didn’t manage to finish high school. She worked for 16 years at the Mason Can Co.

Had she finished high school, Moniz said, she “would have loved to be a history teacher.”

Mary Moniz has three children, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

The new high school graduate took the moment to remind her great-grandchildren of the importance of learning.