Share Tweet Share Email

‘You can never quit learning’

December 6, 2022

Returning to NIU after decades, 90-year-old Huskie earns degree

Joyce DeFauw tries on a graduation cap during a visit to the NIU campus in August.

Joyce DeFauw has always liked happy endings.

This December, she’s getting hers.

Having just turned 90 years old, she’ll graduate from NIU with a Bachelor of General Studies degree. It’s a degree seven decades in the making. One, she says, anyone could achieve, really.

She’ll tell you otherwise, but Joyce isn’t just anyone.

She’s among the oldest Huskies to ever graduate from NIU, and—despite doubting the suggestion—she’s become an inspiration to all who know her.

“I never dreamed I’d be around at this time,” she says with a shrug, “but here I am.”

“I’ve learned that I can do things I never thought I could do, with the help of others. You can never quit learning.”

‘Just don’t give up’

Joyce is many things. A mother of nine, grandmother to 17 and great-grandmother to 24. A friend to those in the Geneseo retirement community where she lives. A lover of yard sales, home-baked bread, mementos, prayer.

DeFauw brought her original 1951 NIU identification card with her when she returned in 2019.

She’s a believer in the power of family and faith, in persevering. She’s a believer in education.

“You can’t put a value on it, in my opinion,” she says. “Just don’t give up. I mean if you have the opportunity, take that opportunity, and you never know. A lot of us get sidetracked or whatever, but go back. Don’t give up.”

Joyce, herself, was sidetracked for about 68 years.

She first enrolled in 1951 but fell a few semesters short of graduating. In 2019, she returned with her original black-and-white student ID and the encouragement of her family to finish her degree through online classes. She steadily worked from her retirement home on her very first computer, given to her by her family.

“People see things in you that you don’t see in yourself,” she says. “I feel these people had faith in me, and I can only give thanks.”

Santacaterina helps DeFauw try on a cap and gown during a visit to campus in August.

She counts the many “passionate professors” she learned from and Judy Santacaterina, director of the Bachelor of General Studies program at NIU, among those people.

Santacaterina has guided Joyce through diverse courses ranging from one on computers to another on aging to a film class to Joyce’s most recent independent study with Santacaterina.

As much as Santacaterina has helped Joyce find her way, Joyce has helped Santacaterina. She shares Joyce’s story with students in her program. It’s the type of story that ignites spirits, she says.

“I have a picture of Joyce in my office,” Santacaterina says. “She gave it to me when we first met. On days when I find myself a little discouraged, overwhelmed and questioning my abilities, I look at her picture and find new inspiration and motivation.

“Joyce is emblematic of the beautiful reciprocity of education. While she has learned so much from the fine faculty and staff she has worked with, we in turn have learned so much from her.”

‘I met this good-looking guy’

DeFauw holds her high school senior portrait.

When Joyce initially came to DeKalb, NIU was the Northern Illinois State Teachers College. It transitioned into Northern Illinois State college in 1955 and finally Northern Illinois University in 1957.

Joyce Viola Kane back then, she became the first in her family to go to college, thinking she’d get a teaching degree and make her father proud. She soon changed her major to home economics because she felt it suited her better.

She worked at a drug store near campus, walked to class from the home she shared with seven other “town girls.”

“I had no car, and I didn’t know how to drive anyway, not until I dated my first husband,” she remembers. “I drove at night so no one could see me, which was foolish.”

DeFauw shares photos from her time on campus during the 1950s with NIU President Lisa Freeman during a visit to campus in August.

She earned a trophy she still has while competing on the university’s bowling team. “It seemed like when my boyfriend was watching, I could really hit the pocket,” she remembers.

Old university yearbooks show her smiling among classmates in group pictures.

“I went three and a half years,” she says, “and then at church I met this good-looking guy and things happened and we decided to get married.”

She quit school, and life got “kind of busy” for her and her first husband, the late Don Freeman Sr.

And that’s pretty much the story, she says, as she talks of having three children in three years before her first husband’s death, of the five years she spent as a widow, of having six more children—including two sets of twins—with her second husband, the late Roy DeFauw.

Dusty photo albums, some falling apart, also tell the story. Years of laughter and hard work, of ups and downs. She looks at a black-and-white family photo, talks of losing one of her children in a drowning at the age of 10.

DeFauw had three children in three years of marriage before her first husband, Don Freeman Sr., died. Widowed about five years, DeFauw married her second husband, Roy DeFauw, and had six more children, including two sets of twins.

DeFauw had three children in three years of marriage before her first husband, Don Freeman Sr., died. Widowed about five years, DeFauw married her second husband, Roy DeFauw, and had six more children, including two sets of twins.

Other photos depict the family’s life on the farm.

When her children didn’t listen, she’d make them swat 100 flies. She’d pepper them with what they now jokingly call “momisms” — “Do as I say, not as I do.”

“I didn’t want to teach. With life the way it turned out, with all the family and everything, I guess you teach whether you want to or not,” she says. “They’ve all turned out to be such wonderful people, so something rubbed off.”

‘I didn’t want to let them down’

She recounts years of growing older, having hip surgery, eventually moving into a retirement home. She felt intimidated by that first computer, but slowly learned to use it. There were triumphs and challenges.

When the COVID pandemic hit, she couldn’t leave her room. They brought her meals, and she felt even more thankful for her computer because it gave her something to do. Still, the isolation and struggles with her studies got to her occasionally.

“A lot of times I would have quit. I almost did,” she says. “There were just too many people who knew about it. I didn’t want to let them down. I quit once and I was like, ‘I don’t want to do it again.’”

When finances threatened to halt her journey, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciencesawarded her a Project Finish Line Scholarship. The scholarship helps students facing financial difficulties in their final semester stay enrolled and earn their degree.

“A lot of times I would have quit. I almost did,” DeFauw says. “There were just too many people who knew about it. I didn’t want to let them down.”

Without that and her family, Joyce says, she never would have gotten her degree.

Among her many family members, a granddaughter, Jenna Dooley, graduated from NIU and works as news director at Northern Public Radio.

“When I was very little, she read me a tattered book called ‘Stone Soup’ before naptime,” Dooley remembers. “The folk story basically tells the moral that everyone’s contribution matters and many hands make light work. I have carried that philosophy into my personal and professional life.”

The university made an investment in Joyce then and now, Dooley says, and provided a support network that shared her journey right along with her.

‘I was given so much’

In many ways, Joyce was Dooley’s first teacher, finding one-on-one time with her grandkids to show them how to bake pies and breads from scratch.

“Everybody loves her bread,” Dooley says. “She would bring boxes containing loaves of bread to the holidays, and we would all have our favorite flavor to take home. Sourdough is her specialty.”

Eager to take part in her upcoming graduation ceremony, DeFauw says, “I just hope I don’t fall.”

She also taught Dooley in Sunday School.

Joyce likes to talk of those church days spent teaching and singing in the choir.

“I’m not the best singer, but it’s something I enjoyed,” she says.

Like the way she’d lower her alto voice to harmonize, she’s always simply done what needs to be done, blended in, never asked for too much in life.

But, as she slowly walks across the stage this December to earn her diploma, she’ll be in the spotlight for a while. And, as much as she dismisses the accomplishment — “I just hope I don’t fall”— she’ll be filled with pride and thankfulness for the opportunity, the ability and good health.

“At the village where I live, some don’t really know where they are,” she says. “To be able to do what I’ve done is a blessing… I was given so much.”