The mind, according to Tom Esposito, "is a wonderful instrument" which must be put into play regularly. "Learning keeps the mind open," Esposito stresses. "Use it or lose it." It’s advice he takes to heart.

In mid-September, just about a month shy of his 70^th birthday, the retired Watervliet resident aced a five-part exam to earn his New York State General Equivalency Diploma, or GED. "The examiners said it would be several weeks before I’d hear anything, so when the diploma arrived in my mail on September 27, I was afraid to open it right away," Esposito recalled. "I shouldn’t have been surprised, though, because we had a great teacher, and she had a lot of faith in us."

Esposito’s teacher was Mary Jane Black, an instructor in the Capital Region BOCES Adult Education program who led a GED class at the Watervliet Senior Citizens Center, Inc., from November through May 2002. During the summer months, when Esposito and his fellow students studied through the GRASP (GRASP) home-study program, Black continued to work with the seniors when she brought their study packets to the senior center.

"I’ve been teaching for 38 years, and Tom had the best notebook I had ever seen," said Black. "He worked very hard. If I assigned two chapters from a book, he’d read five. The class would go way beyond what I asked in every assignment."

"When you have someone right there with you, it is so much easier to ask questions," Esposito remarked. "And I appreciated the extra help in algebra and geometry, which I didn’t take in high school. Completing my education and earning a GED was something very personal which I always wanted to do."

Esposito dropped out of Troy High in 11^th grade and went to work full time in the shipping department of Montgomery Wards in Menands. "Leaving school to work wasn’t uncommon in those days," he recalled. "You could get a decent-paying job without a diploma, unlike today." Esposito next worked as a utility laborer at Republic Steel’s coke processing plant in Troy, and in December of 1952, he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. While on leave from base in Junction City, KS, he married Thomasine, whom he had met back home at his cousin’s wedding.

After being discharged from the military, Esposito and his wife returned to the Capital District, where they raised a son, David. Esposito took a job at Behr-Manning/Norton (now St. Gobain), an abrasives manufacturer, where he worked until retiring in 1993. For the past six years, he’s actively volunteered at the Watervliet Senior Center. When he decided to attend class there to earn his GED, Esposito’s family was right behind him.

"I would compare my textbooks to those of my grandsons, Zachary and Alexander, and we’d talk about school a lot. I’m always stressing responsibility," Esposito said. "I kid Zachary that when he graduates from Troy High in 2008, Grandpa is going to have his own diploma and go right up on the stage with him."

Esposito is thankful to BOCES for offering the GED program and thinks more retirees should take advantage of it, "just to get their brains moving." Education, he maintains, is the key to success in life. "I’m so thankful to BOCES," he said, "and to Penny Norton, executive director of the Watervliet Senior Center. They even made me a cake with a little diploma on it at the center and announced my GED at a recent event."

"I admire Tom; he’s methodical, faithful and perseveres," said Norton. "There’s a lot we can learn from his generation," Norton said. "They have a work ethic that is lacking today. It’s remarkable that of the group of eight people who started the GED class here, the three who finished were the senior citizens. You are never too old to learn."

Although Tom Esposito earned his diploma more than a half century after leaving school, and took less than a year to do so, his GED instructor still had the last word. "Mary Jane kept telling our class, ‘Don’t worry’," said Esposito. "Now she says, ‘I told you so.’"

[11/02]