Like Almost Famous, it’s a coming of age story. One of challenges, persistence, legacy.

And hepatitis A.

According to HNGN, 89 year old Betty Reilly received a bachelor’s degree this week after having her academic career derailed by hepatitis A 70 years ago.

Reilly had to drop out of high school close to graduation when she became ill with Hepatitis A after eating raw oysters in Times Square as a teen. The year it took for her to recover from the debilitating illness squashed her dreams of not only getting that high school diploma, but also her college dreams.

So she went to work, met her husband and raised a family, like most people. It wasn’t until she applied for a job at a library in Sunrise, Fla. that this then 78-year-old self-processed bookworm realized her lack of degreed education can come back to hurt her. The librarian told Reilly at the time that she needed a high school diploma to work there.

So off went Betty Reilly to get an education, at the ripe old age of 78, according to the Jackson County Floridian.

College was not in her future, though, as Reilly had limited funds and no vehicle. However, she was advised to look into the Federal Pell Grant system, which took care of most of Reilly’s tuition, books and fees, and she took the public transportation’s hour-long bus to Broward Community College in Davie, Fla. to receive her Associate’s Degree.

According to a 1995 paper by Joseph Melnick in the Journal of Infectious Diseases goes through the history of hepatitis A virus; it wasn’t differentiated from other jaundice–causing illnesses until 1945, a little after when Reilly was in high school.