Graduate Knows All About Carrying a Full Load

Ramsey: "How are you going to do that?"

Spady-Viney: "I don't know."

At that point, "I just got out of her way, and she did it, and when I asked her how it went, she'd say, 'I got an A-plus,' " Ramsey said. "She's an inspiration." (Spady-Viney chuckled at her sister's story: "It wasn't no 32 chapters. It probably was five or six chapters that I had to read that night," she said.)

Spady-Viney, nicknamed "Miss Sylvia," was an inspiration to her fellow students, partly because of her age and experience.

"It was fun, you know. I'd been working in the field for so long, I think I added a lot to the classes," she said. "I think a lot of the students looked at me as someone who was knowledgeable."

She also did two years of field work in Prince George's in addition to her job, working last year with mothers of drug-addicted newborns. This year, she worked with teenagers, many of them disabled, and their families.

For all of her hard work and self-confidence, the sheer joy of graduating stopped her cold. Wearing a black robe and a black-and-gold hood she borrowed from a friend, she cried off and on from the moment she sat down with almost 400 other students from the school of social work, waiting for her name to be called. Her grandchildren Laylah, 8, and Eric, 6, as well as her daughter, her sister and a co-worker cheered her on.

"Me and one of my co-workers who was in the same program, we kept going, 'We're not going to cry,' and then we started crying," Spady-Viney said. "I didn't realize it was going to affect me the way it did. It's just a really good feeling."

The speeches washed over her. Later that afternoon, she couldn't remember a thing anyone had said, only going up to the stage and having the hood draped around her neck.

Had she ever doubted she could make it?

"No," she said. "Having my two little grandkids, having custody of them, that's been a real driving force in my life." And she added a bit of advice for the youngsters.

"If this old lady can do it, you can do anything."