Disabled Iron Range woman given posthumous diploma — decades after failing gym

NASHWAUK, MINN. — Doctors said Carole Clark McBride would never walk, but she did up until she had a stroke late in life. She wasn't supposed to have children, but she had four. And when her classmates were graduating from Nashwauk High School in 1961, she was told not to bother showing up for the ceremony.

McBride, who had cerebral palsy, had not passed gym, and school administrators said she wouldn't be getting a diploma. She attended anyway and received an unsigned version. McBride, who had otherwise gotten good grades and been involved with extracurricular activities, lived quietly with that slight until she died of congestive heart failure Sept. 2. She was 82.

On Tuesday morning, the Nashwauk-Keewatin band played "Pomp and Circumstance," and superintendent Rae Villebrun finally handed off some newly minted hardware to Carole's family. Bonnie McBride, her oldest daughter, turned and raised the diploma over her head in front of students, community members and family gathered in the high school gymnasium.

Carole had, according to the plaque, "completed the course of study prescribed by the board of education."

"I wanted the world to see," Bonnie McBride said afterward.

Throughout the ceremony, Beth Potter carried her grandmother's ashes, enclosed in blue wrapping paper and a glittery gift bag — a colorful remembrance of the woman who reportedly loved every season.

Carole McBride's family decided during her funeral earlier this year that it was time to address the void, a secret their mother had held for decades.

"Every once in a while she would bring it up — but not very often," said daughter Jamie McBride. "To us, she graduated. That's how we looked at it. She held it as a secret for many years. When it came out, we couldn't believe it."

They reached out to connections within the school district to see if it was possible to confer the posthumous award. Amie Furlong, a former counselor at the school, went digging and found a clerical curiosity in the school's fire-safe vault: Carole McBride's transcripts weren't among the rest of the students in her class, she said. But McBride was featured in yearbooks — she had been on the yearbook staff and in the nursing club.

It was evidence of an engaged student.

"I'm very, very grateful for the family being fierce advocates," Furlong said, confessing to goosebumps on Tuesday morning. "You don't always have the opportunity to right a wrong."

The idea of a posthumous graduation ceremony got approval from Villebrun and the school's principal, Max Torgerson. Members of the senior class were asked to plan it — which they did as if it was their own, according to class president Olivia Nagler, who passed out programs and spoke during the ceremony.

A slideshow played a lifetime of images of McBride, often with a big floral barrette in her hair and an even bigger smile. She was known for colorful attire which, for more than 20 years, included a Pride pin. (She was cremated wearing it, according to Jamie McBride.) Carole was an advocate who in 2012 insisted everyone at the nursing home vote against the proposed state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Carole McBride liked to garden, write letters, listen to loud gospel music — or sometimes classic country. She woke early every morning to visit sick residents who didn't have family to visit them. She wanted to go fast, according to her family, whether it was in a car or boat. She was president of the nursing home's resident council and played trombone.

As family mingled after the ceremony, Bonnie McBride suggested that maybe her mother had come across like a saint during the event. The truth was, she was a little naughty: She had gotten in trouble more than once at Grand Village in Grand Rapids, where she lived for 22 years, for putting dish soap in the nursing home's decorative fountain.

Added Jamie McBride: "She had the best sense of humor."