Neva Powers Mason, born in 1912, grew up in Loma Linda, Calif., played in the local orchestra, married a physician and attended the first-term inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.She raised four children, two of whom became doctors and another a dentist.With all that, she had one regret: She never got a high school diploma from Loma Linda Academy.That is, never until now.The 95-year-old widow, who was cheated out of a diploma because the school didn't have a 12th grade when she was a senior in 1929, received her academy diploma in April."I felt bewildered," she said of the moment when school officials called her to the front of an auditorium during alumni weekend and dressed her in a cap and gown."I was happy, really happy," Mason said. "And it began to dawn on me what a big deal this really was. They showed a picture of me taken when I was in high school."Her husband died 18 years ago. Mason lives alone in the cottage-like hillside home in Hollywood that they bought 65 years ago.Born in Napa County, Calif., Mason came with her parents to Loma Linda at age 3. Her father managed the farm that fed Seventh-day Adventists attending the college."Most people were vegetarians," she said. "That was not part of the religion. It was part of the health thing."I remember the kids who didn't go to the Adventist school. They would take the bus to Redlands," she recalled. "When the bus would go by, I would be out sometimes mowing the lawn or something. They would yell out, 'Cabbage eaters.' "Mason enrolled at Loma Linda Academy at age 7. The first and second grades were combined in one classroom of fewer than 20 students. She finished both grades in the first year."You were expected to go to church," she said. "You knew everybody and we all kind of looked after each other. Nobody had too much money. They sacrificed a lot to get that school going and keep it accredited."Students at the academy, much like students at the college, played in the town's orchestra."It was surprising how many doctors and medical students are musicians," she said. "And they are very good at it. So we always had a good orchestra."She played the coronet. Christopher Mason, a medical student six years her senior, played the flute. Between rehearsals, they dated under family supervision.Loma Linda Academy opened in 1906, but as a junior academy that only went through the 11th grade. Neva Powers Mason and four classmates took a bus to La Sierra Academy for their senior year.She enrolled in a nursing school in St. Helena, Calif., and stayed there until Christopher Mason called six months later."He wanted to know if I was going to marry him," she remembers. "I said, 'You haven't asked me.' He said, 'The reason I'm asking is because I'm going to intern now and it will make a difference. If I'm going to get married, I'll take the one that pays the most.' I had known him and I had never gone with anyone else. I said yes."The higher-paying job was at a hospital in Washington, D.C., and she was living there during the Roosevelt inauguration."It was cold that day," she said. "It was so crowded. I put my arm up to adjust my hat and I couldn't get my arm down."They returned to Loma Linda in the late 1930s while her husband taught anatomy at the college. Then he moved on to a practice in Los Angeles.But she never lost touch with her Loma Linda roots, and has been a regular at Loma Linda Academy's alumni reunions."She's so spunky," says Shawna Campbell, the school's assistant director of public relations and marketing. "She ... (has) been a great source of information on the history of our school."It was at one of those reunions two years ago that Mason met Mary Morgan, the academy's director of advancement and development."She is just the sweetest, cutest little old lady," Morgan said, "and she felt bad because her sister, who graduated in 1935, has a diploma from Loma Linda Academy and she does not."Only a year after Mason's graduation from La Sierra, Loma Linda Academy added the 12th grade and began issuing diplomas.Morgan persuaded her fellow administrators to issue a diploma, dated 1929. She checked with La Sierra Academy but they had long since lost records from those years. Morgan secretly arranged for 20 members of Mason's family to attend the graduation ceremony at this year's alumni weekend."They told me I was representing the class of '29, which didn't exist," Mason said. "They said they had something for me."E-mail Darrell R. Santschi at dsantschi(at)PE.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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