Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard
Link copied to clipboard

OHIO

Diploma in hand; mom at side

A terminally ill woman with inoperable pancreatic cancer was able to see her daughter graduate from high school during a ceremony held in her hospice room.

Evie Shumaker, 17, was supposed to graduate from Newark Digital Academy in central Ohio on May 31. When she told her teachers about her mother, Melissa Shumaker, 57, they decided to organize a graduation celebration Monday at Licking Memorial Hospital.

The teen was in cap and gown, "Pomp and Circumstance" played on a cellphone, and Shumaker saw school officials hand her daughter a diploma.

The teen, the youngest of three girls, said her mother cried after the ceremony because "she was able to see her baby graduate." - AP