Margaret Drescher, 82, is going to become Sault Ste. Marie’s oldest person to graduate high school, we think.
For the last two years Drescher has been attending the Algoma District School Board’s (ADSB) Adult Learning Centre with the end goal of attaining her high school diploma.
If everything stays on course she is expected to reach that goal this June at the school’s graduation ceremony.
Drescher’s desire to complete her high school education started when she wanted to adapt her life experiences into a story; a love story in fact.
Born during the depression in 1933, Drescher was the oldest of 12 or 13 children, she doesn’t know exactly how many, of whom at least five died of malnutrition during infancy.
She said that one of her only memories of that age was that her family was extremely poor and could sometimes only get food at a food bank on special “relief days”.
“I remember you needed a special card. My father would pull me and my sister in a wagon to get food; those were our good days,” she said.
Years later she was told by people who had known her that she would often be found playing barefoot in the snow.
For these reasons, at five years old, she and her sister were placed in an orphanage.
The paperwork said “for reasons of malnutrition and complete neglect.”
Drescher would be in and out of the orphanage and foster homes until she got pregnant at 17 and married.
Drescher remembers growing up in a Morley Torgov-esque Sault Ste. Marie, full of Finnish, Italian, Ukrainian, and Jewish communities that were much more distinct from each other than today.
She started working in restaurants at 14 and never wanted to go to school which she said was common at the time when families could get decent jobs without high school diplomas.
“I just wanted to have fun and make money.”
Once married, Drescher raised six children in a 20-year abusive marriage she would rather forget.
“It was hardest for the children. They’re not the best memories,” she said.
But things changed for her in 1967 when a 5’5” man wearing a plaid shirt and a knife in his belt went in to buy “sweets” at the Safeway she worked at.
“I just looked at his eyes and – bing - I knew I was going to marry him, I just knew it,” said Drescher who was actually still married to her first husband at the time.
Drescher’s eyes light up and she becomes very animated talking about this man - her second husband and love of her life, Manford Drescher.
“He treated me like a woman that was worth being loved,“ she said.
She began secretly meeting Manford and, even after she divorced from her first husband, he courted her for five years until they were finally married in 1975.
Drescher said what she loved most about Manford was that he didn’t throw words around lightly and so when he did speak , it had meaning.
“So, when he told me he loved me, I believed him, “ she said.
Manford died in 2000 and after years of thinking of him Drescher wanted to get into a college creative writing program and fictionalize their love story.
However without the required high school diploma for college entry, Drescher decided to get that instead.
“Margaret is a very dedicated individual. She wants to set an example for her family but, while doing that, she is setting an example for the whole building. She’s a bit of a celebrity,” said Mark Zorzit, Principal of the Adult Learning Centre.
Zorzit said that they don’t have any official statistics on who the oldest graduate in the Sault is but that, as far as anyone at the ADSB knows, she is it.
Drescher excels at English, struggles but persists at math, and will avoid using computer at all costs.
“Let’s put it bluntly, I’m afraid of them, “ she said.
At the school everyone talks about what a wonderful and witty sense of humor she has and Drescher is constantly making friends and getting involved in extra activities at the school.
She participates in a home-economics type program, a book club, and has even done Yoga though she says that after hurting her arm she won’t be doing that anymore.
“She’s like everyone’s mother here. It’s going to be huge when she graduates in June,” said Zorzit.
Drescher has since got sidetracked on her book-writing journey but she said she still might still take college-level creative writing program and try to actually write it.
If she does write it, she said it will take place on a grassy jutted-out cliff area by the sea and it will be “very sweet and gentle” just like her and Manford’s love was.
“I might finish it one day, who knows. I take it one day at a time I figure after 80 I’m on borrowed time. I try to live everyday as best I can and try to spread happiness,” said Drescher.