Senior Scholar Fulfills Life-long Dream to Graduate Medical School–a Doctor at 73-Years Young

By Andy Corbley – May 14, 2026

When Mr. Carl Craft nearly died from a brain hemorrhage, he and his wife Dawn reviewed their bucket list. Carl wanted to travel, and Dawn said she wanted to go to medical school.

“He thought I was crazy,” she said.

Now, though, Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft proudly holds a doctorate in medicine after graduating as the school’s oldest-ever graduate at 72.

The doctoral dream took root from the earliest periods of Zuidgeest-Craft’s life and would blossom into a career as a nurse practitioner and pediatric educator. It was a career she enjoyed even while marrying and giving birth to two children.

For their sake, Zuidgeest-Craft put her medical school ambition on hold—at least until her 40s, she thought. Then she got divorced and remarried before she and her new husband, Carl, decided to start their own family. Zuidgeest-Craft spent the decade raising two more children.

The dream of medical school gradually faded until Carl suffered his brain hemorrhage, at which point Dawn realized it had to happen now, or, as the phrase goes, never.

Digging into her retirement savings, Zuidgeest-Craft paid the tuition for St. James School of Medicine in Anguilla, the Caribbean, where the institution waives the requirement for a Medical College Admission Test.

It wasn’t a straightforward process, and the senior scholar wouldn’t have hoped or imagined failing the biochemistry exam during year 1, but with the support of her husband Carl and the classmates who all remember her fondly from their dorm living, movie nights, and yoga sessions on the beach, Zuidgeest-Craft kept going.

It took clinical rotations in Chicago and West Virginia, and a stint in South Texas, where a medical professional encouraged her—based on her aptitude—to seek a residency program, for Zuidgeest-Craft to graduate with her doctorate this month, not long before her 73rd Birthday.

“When you have to do it for work… you feel like, ‘I got to do this so that I can pay my rent,’” Zuidgeest-Craft, who has three grandchildren, told the Washington Post. “I want to do this because I really enjoy this.”

“I feel alive when I work in the medical field.”

She will begin her residency at Trinity Health Medical Center in Muskegon, Michigan, this year.

The good news in this story is that a long-held dream has finally been realized. Today’s JohnKu talks about dreams. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

They are yours to have,

Which no one should take away . . .

Work till they come true.