Pasadena – Ted Sams, aged 78, regretted for 60 years of having missed his high school graduation.

Sams donned the graduation a cap and gown. He walked across the graduation stage at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and received the diploma this Friday with the class of 2022 at Southern California’s San Gabriel High School.

In 1962 as a high school senior, Sams got in trouble and was suspended five days before the end of the school year. He says he missed a crucial final exam and had to make it up over the summer.

“When I went back with my grade, they wouldn’t give me my diploma because I owed $4.80 for a book,” Sams told KABC-TV. “And so I just walked away and said forget it.”

“Over the years, I complained to my kids a number of times about how $4.80 kept me from having my diploma,” he said.

The school still had Sams’ original diploma locked away in an old filing cabinet. Sams said he plans on hanging the diploma on a wall at his home.
-AP