WHEN AN EMAIL comes your way with the words “golden graduate” in the subject line, it’s hard for your interest to not be at least a little piqued. But then I ended up on the phone with William Joyce, with his wife Teresa chatting on speakerphone behind him, and he said the words, “my fire science degree was 40 years in the making.” I was really curious then. It turns out, after a truly lovely half- hour conversation with this couple, that the story of William’s 40-year-degree is simultaneously simple and complex. But really, did I say lovely? “In 1986, I started my fire science degree in a pilot program they had at Paducah Community College,” William said. “But then Teresa needed to complete her degree, so instead of completing my general education subjects, I quit taking classes to get her through college.” You see what I mean now, don’t you? “Because of work and life, I just never did pick it back up,” he said. But then, Teresa had, at the ready, the list of jobs that William held in his career and I honestly couldn’t make the math add up here, because I knew that this man I was talking to was only 68-years-old. He worked at USEC’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, left there for Reidland Water Company, then worked for Atmos Energy, where he retired after two decades. But, retirement apparently meant nothing to William because he went right back to USEC working maintenance until the plant shut down, and then later joined the clean-up company working in fire services. Whew. Somewhere in there, he decided to go back to school to get a welding certificate so that he could possibly get a job at a machine shop. “I took all my classes at night where I had my days free,” he said. “We own a 156-acre farm, so I spent my days working and taking care of that and with 100 Years of Experience B y J a m i e S e a r s R a w l i n g s • P h o t o s b y A m b e r T a y l o r went to school at night for my welding degree and my general ed classes.” William loved those classes. “I was the old guy in the class, but I had 100 years experience in all the things that I’ve done, so I spent a lot of my class time helping the younger guys figure out how to do stuff,” he laughed. So did I. So did Teresa. “Simple things like cutting a piece of metal on 45-degree angles - I showed them how to do that and helped different guys learn how to weld and use cutting tools.” “I had more fun doing that than I did doing my class stuff because that was second nature to me.” Which is how William became a “golden graduate” the first time. But, by the time he graduated, he had no time to go through the ceremony of it. Because - you guessed it - William was back at work. He’d joined Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership in their fire services department where he worked shift for eight more years. This man never stops. INTHEVUE.COM | JULY 2024 15
