At 87, Dorothy Adams could be the great-grandmother of her fellow graduates at last month's University of Vermont ceremonies. Although precise records are not available, "it's a good bet that Adams is UVM's oldest graduate," says Lee Ann Cox, UVM's senior communications specialist.

Adams' Master of Arts in History this year marks the second time she was noted as the university's oldest graduate. In 2002, she graduated UVM with a Bachelor of Arts. For both degrees, Adams concentrated on the Civil War era and strong women. Why go for the degrees? "Why not?" Adams counters. " I don't want to spend my days watching television. There's just so much cleaning my small condo can take. My dog can be walked just so many times. And I love history." Her next project is a course in writing autobiography.

Adams takes history personally. Her interest in the Civil War and southern culture coalesced when she read "Gone With the Wind" as a young girl. But the roots of her interest go back to the stories her father told her about her ancestors who came to this country in the seventeenth century. Although the family lived in New Jersey, they had a history of owning slaves. Adams remembers Belle, an old woman who lived with cousins and was the daughter of a slave who was a wedding present. "I always felt very sad that Americans wound up fighting Americans," Adams says.

At Arlington Hall, a junior college in Virginia, Adams became "totally enchanted with southern graces and charm." These did not blind her, however, to the other face of southern women – "the witch on a broomstick." After two years, Adams had to leave school in 1941, when her father died, and her mother had to give up her house. But that year, in Washington, she met Eleanor Roosevelt, as one of a group of schoolgirls invited to tea by the First Lady. "She was so tall, you never realized that she had cow-catcher teeth," Adams says. "I fell for her like a ton of bricks."

For her degrees, Adams wrote papers about two strong women. Mary Chestnut (1823-1886) managed her huge plantation (3000 slaves) in South Carolina during the Civil War. She is known for the detailed diary she kept during the war years, describing life at the plantation, gender roles in southern society, and the changing political fortunes of the South. Edited by historian C.Vann Woodward, the diary won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. It was also used extensively (lines read by actress Julie Harris) in Ken Burns' 1990 television documentary of the Civil War.

Lillian Gilbreth (1878 –1972), a pioneer with her husband Frank in industrial/organizational psychology, was an advisor to presidents from Hoover to Johnson on civil defense, war production, and rehabilitation of the physically handicapped. She was also the mother of twelve children and subject of the book, "Cheaper by the Dozen."

The Gilbreths lived in Montclair, New Jersey, Adams' hometown. "When I was young I was disgusted with Lillian, how she treated her children," Adams says. "She was an amazing woman, but my cousin refused to play with her daughter Jane unless they played outside of the Gilbreth house."

Adams discovered Vermont as a camper at Brown Ledge Camp in 1938, eventually moved here and saw both of her children graduate from UVM, while she worked as an administrative assistant to the chair of the department of Pharmacology. Currently she lives in Burlington, but keeps a house in Marlboro where she spends the summers.

As for her relationships with the other students, she says, "I couldn't be part of them, but we did work together on assignments, and I made some friends." She took notes for one student who missed classes because of basketball practice. And she opened her Marlboro house for another who needed a swimming place for young campers he was mentoring. "As you get older," she says, " it's easy to get set in your ways. I try to appreciate young people, not be crabby and tell kids not to pull up the dandelions."

Adams says that in class, she'd "try to clown around a bit. No one was ever rude. Some held doors; some let them slam in my face. Then I would shout out. 'Where are your manners?"  What did upset her was that some students didn't know who Douglas MacArthur was. They didn't even know about Eleanor Roosevelt. "But I have a lot of respect for the students I met," she says. I don't worry about the future of America."

Did you know?
You can take classes for credit free at the University of Vermont, if you are 65 years old or older and a resident of Vermont for at least one year.

Barbara Leitenberg writes on senior issues for the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging. This article originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press.