Metro Woman, 93, Collects College Degrees Along with Birthdays

Juanita Gregory-Harvey had a bad fall recently, but that didn’t stop her from taking a test at Wayne County Community College. (Screenshot via WDIV-TV)

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At 93, Juanita Gregory-Harvey has almost run out of things to study and degrees to earn at Wayne County Community College.

“Almost” is the operative word.

“She’ll find something,” her granddaughter, Marjorie Harvey, told WDIV-TV.

The spry Hamtramck woman has already earned seven college degrees, most of them in the last decade and most of them from WCCC, where she earned B’s, C’s and a few A’s.

She’s a legend among her granddaughter’s friends.

“Usually when I tell it, a lot of people they are in awe about my grandmother that’s 93, that’s still going to school that still can park her car at the downtown campus and walk to the People Mover (light rail service) and go and do what she wants to do downtown,” Marjorie Harvey told the TV station.

Gregory-Harvey, who is retired from AT&T, earned her first shingle, an associate’s degree, in 1974, after challenging members of her book club in Hamtramck to become lifelong learners, according to a story in WCCC’s “Move Forward” magazine.

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From there, she earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Detroit, a master’s of arts degree in human resources from Central Michigan University in 1981, and a slew of WCCC degrees in the business, arts, science, and information technology fields.

Gregory-Harvey told WDIV-TV it’s easy for her to feed her love for learning because WCCC is among the Michigan colleges and universities that waive tuition for senior citizens who live in the county where the college is located.

“I can take advantage of going to school because I don’t have to pay for it,” Gregory-Harvey said.

Even a serious fall in the parking lot of WCCC’s Downtown Campus didn’t stop her from taking a test, said Marjorie Harvey, who shares her grandmother’s zest for learning with the students she works with as GED program coordinator at the Downriver campus.

“... She had a test to take, and she went to take her test,” Harvey said. “She couldn’t miss her test.”

In the “Move Forward” profile Gregory-Harvey credited her love for learning to her parents, who moved the family from Tennessee to Hamtramck when she was a young girl.

WCCC’s commencement is June 6, but Gregory-Harvey won’t be walking across the stage to get another sheepskin. She’s on track to receive an associate’s degree in accounting, but a class she needed to graduate was filled this semester, WCCC’s marketing and public relations firm, Bassett & Bassett, told Patch in an email.

Gregory-Harvey’s parents and six siblings were all well educated, and she insisted on the same standards for her own four children, all of whom have advanced degrees.

For some of her accomplishments, watch the video below, compiled for her induction into the Hamtramck Fall of Fame in 2012.