From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for May 27, 1972:

Recent rejections of job applications had started two local women thinking about their education. Helen Pearson, Linwood, and Mary Jane Bowler, Lawrence, both had lacked a high-school diploma. Their reasons were different. Having left school in the ninth grade in 1946, Pearson had raised two children before experiencing the wake-up call of being turned down for a clerking job in a dime store. She had enrolled in her first course in 1963 through the Lawrence Adult Education program and had taken classes over a nine-year period before completing her requirements. Bowler had been lacking only a one-credit course in driver’s education, but that missing credit had prevented her from receiving her diploma. Both women were celebrating with graduates in the more conventional high-school age bracket this week as they accomplished their long-term goals.