In segregated America in the 1930s, Merrill Pittman Cooper’s family was too poor for him to stay in school. At age 101, he finally got his high school diploma.
In 1978, he married Marion Karpeh, a single mom of three children who lived in a nearby neighborhood in Philadelphia and worked as a pharmacist.
Beckerink’s sister, Enid Karpeh-Diaz, 64, remembers her stepfather often told them to “keep the heat on.”“My mother and stepdad believed the key to economic stability and career advancement, particularly as an African American, was education,” she said. “Even though my dad did not have the opportunity to go to college — not having a high school diploma — he achieved a great deal of success in his lifetime.
Then last year, Rod Beckerink decided his father-in-law deserved something more. He worked with Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and the Jefferson School District to set up a surprise ceremony at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City to award Cooper an honorary high school diploma.On March 19, Beckerink and Cooper’s stepdaughters took him to the hotel on the pretense that somebody wanted to ask him some questions about his long life.
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