60 years later, Alaska man gets the high school diploma he always deserved

When he was a student at Anchorage High School, Billy Ray Macon Sr. wasn't the typical teenager.

During his senior year in 1961, Macon was married with a baby and working nights at the Elmendorf Air Force Base. His family lived in a tiny house without running water, and because they didn't have a car, Macon had to walk an hour to and from school. He barely had time to start his homework before he had to walk to work. For the sake of his family and their future, "the only thing on my mind was to get a diploma," Macon told Alaska's News Source.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.