From the archives: A commencement for all ages

This story was originally published in Newsday on May 9, 2005

A middle-age mom, octogenarian veteran and Salvadoran native join others in the 47th C.W. Post graduationGraduation couldn't have fallen on a more appropriate Sunday than Mother's Day for Irene Deniston of Long Beach. The 47-year-old mother of nine knows a thing or two about the confluence of motherhood and education.

In the 1980s, when Deniston was a divorced mother of three surviving on part-time wages and welfare, her children spurred her to aim higher. "I needed to be there for my children, not just to support them financially but to be a role model for them," she said.

Yesterday, accompanied by her husband and seven of her brood, Deniston sat among more than 2,200 graduates at the 47th commencement of Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus.

A melange of students made up the class of 2005, including a World War II veteran who earned his degree more than 50 years after returning from war.

Seated in the wind-whipped tent on the campus' Great Lawn, the spirited graduates were nervous, relieved and emotional. "It's been a long journey," said Jose Machuca, 25, of Port Washington, the first in his family to earn a college degree. Tears streamed down his face as he embraced his mother and grandfather, whom he personally escorted to the United States from his native El Salvador for the occasion. Machuca, who earned a bachelor's degree in education, said he hopes to return to Port Washington schools as a physical education teacher.

Roger Tilles, outgoing chairman of LIU's board of trustees, delivered the commencement address: "Go. Make sure you like what you do and do it well."

Deniston, armed with a master's degree in library science, aimed to do just that. In the 1980s, realizing that education was the way to overcome poverty, she graduated from Nassau Community College. She enrolled as an undergraduate at Hofstra University where she spent five years earning a bachelor's in education even as she and her second husband added four children to the four of their combined families. Before her former husband died several years ago, he asked her to raise his child from another relationship, and they became nine.

Two years ago, Deniston decided to pursue a graduate degree. "It was rough at times, but it was definitely worth it," she said. "I'm very happy that I will now have more time to spend with the family."

While Deniston plans to look for a full-time teaching job, his- tory major Seymour Schwartz is entertaining no such ideas.

"This was for my pleasure," said Schwartz, 82, of Levittown, who returned to school in 1997, 50 years after he returned from World War II. "I just wanted to get a degree after all that time."

He was afraid, he said, because his first foray into higher education, studying music at Juilliard, then accounting at New York University, failed miserably. So he took it slow, one course per semester, until the credits began to add up.

He may not have been the best student in his younger years, but Schwartz was a decorated soldier. From 1943 to 1946, he traveled the North Atlantic and Pacific Islands on Navy ships, earning five battle stars.

After giving up on a career in music and feeling that his lack of facility with numbers would make him a dismal accountant, Schwartz went to work in sales. For the past 15 years he has been a sales manager for William E. Martin and Sons, a spice importer based in Queens. His wife, whom he married 29 years ago after they met in a Gilbert and Sullivan workshop, has been his greatest source of encouragement.

"I got jealous," said Schwartz. "She had three degrees and I didn't have any. She said, 'Go back to school! Get your degree!' and I always listen to my wife."