It was the tail end of the Depression when Graham, then 14, had to leave school in the eighth grade to take care of four younger siblings, including a baby.

CHARLIE NEUMAN / Union-Tribune Marie Graham, shown with Vic Walters, played bingo Wednesday at the San Diego Center for the Blind and Vision Impaired. Graham volunteered at the center before she became a client.

Her mother and father were gravely ill, and both would die within the year. The scene was Staten Island, N.Y., and times were tough. “Near starvation. Terrible,” Graham said.

High school – education – had to take a back seat. There were more pressing responsibilities.

This week, however, Graham finally earned her GED certificate – at 83.

“It's something I've always wanted to do,” she said. “I've always wanted to know and learn everything I can.”

It wasn't the first time that Graham, who is legally blind, had tried.

When she was 17, Graham met a young man and they fell in love. They married, and he adopted her brothers and sisters. In 1944, the whole family moved to San Diego, where they raised those children as well as three of their own.

In 1957, Graham first tried to earn her high school equivalency degree.

J. HARRY JONES / Union-Tribune Poway school board member Andy Patapow congratulated Marie Graham Wednesday at her graduation ceremony.

“The office was in Linda Vista at the time, and I had just learned to drive for this purpose,” she said. “I was going to base it around my husband's days off because we only had one car.”

But Graham's firstborn daughter got sick that year and had to undergo major surgery. School had to wait again.

In 1970, she tried a second time, taking adult classes. But then her husband, Jim, had a near-fatal stroke and she had a house “full of kids.”

Jim survived, but had health and vision problems from then on. In 1980, she and Jim took a rare vacation to southern Indiana for 10 days to visit relatives. It was there, she and her doctors were convinced, that she picked up a rare eye disease and began to lose her sight.

That same year, she and Jim began volunteering in the kitchen at the San Diego Center for the Blind and Vision Impaired in Vista. Eventually, they both became legally blind and clients of the center.

When Jim died in 2004, after 62 years of marriage, Graham casually said, “What am I going to do now?” to her longtime friend Kathryn Scott, who is administrative assistant at the blind center.

Scott suggested that Graham go back and get that degree she always wanted. “By that time I had made up my mind that it was futile,” Graham said.

But Scott insisted. Graham attended classes at a San Diego Community College District continuation school for 18 months. She passed four of the five tests needed for the certificate on the first try, but math – algebra, to be exact – was difficult. The school had trouble providing the math materials that a blind person needed, and after failing the test three times, Graham quit.

But Scott, who lives in Poway, wouldn't let her give up. She called the Poway Adult School, operated by the Poway Unified School District.

“See how pushy she is?” Graham said.

Officials at the Poway school said they would be glad to help. Twice a week for the next six months, Mary Perez, a counselor, or Assistant Principal David Boulware picked Graham up at her Mira Mesa home and drove her to classes in Sabre Springs. She studied side by side with teenagers and young adults who had left high school for one reason or another.

“They would drift in and out,” Graham said. “A lot of them wouldn't even keep their appointments. So when they would come in, after I had become acquainted with them, I'd give them the third degree. 'Where have you been? How come you didn't show up?' ”

Late last year, Graham passed the math test. Wednesday night, at a ceremony at the Westview High School theater, she was awarded the certificate she been wanting since before World War II.

Perez singled Graham out in a speech before the certificates were awarded, briefly outlining what she accomplished in her life. “I'm so proud of her for never giving up.” Perez said.

The ovation as Graham walked across the stage was huge. Her smile was wide.

J. Harry Jones: (760) 737-7579; jharry.jones@uniontrib.com