CITY OF NEWBURGH – When Frederica Warner’s former high school classmates were graduating, she was working seven days a week as a housekeeper to help support her widowed mother in Depression-era Newburgh.

As Frank Robinson’s friends began their senior year, he was starting U.S. Army basic training in preparation for what would be a one-year tour in Vietnam.

“I felt that it was my moral obligation to do something for my country,” he said.

A sense of duty led Warner, 99, and Robinson, 70, to sacrifice one of the most treasured watershed moments in life: graduation from high school and receipt of a diploma.

On Thursday, Newburgh school district officials gave them that moment.

Wearing blue graduation robes and gold sashes, Warner and Robinson were the first to have their names called and to receive long-overdue diplomas at the district’s annual ceremony for its August high school graduates.

The ceremony took place inside the Newburgh Free Academy auditorium, which was filled with family and friends of the nearly three dozen traditional graduates.

“It feels like I’m the luckiest lady in the world,” said Warner, the founder of Meals on Wheels of Greater Newburgh; a street will also be named in her honor on Friday.

Warner was a sophomore at Newburgh Free Academy when her father died.

An only child with a mother in her 60s, she began working as a housekeeper to support the family’s home on Chambers Street and continued working as a housekeeper after she married and had a daughter.

“I felt my mother was important,” Warner said. “You only have one mother.”

Civic minded, Warner belonged to numerous organizations. In 1972, she founded Meals on Wheels.

Meals on Wheels’ current board began looking for ideas to honor the organization’s 45th anniversary this year, and Warner’s 100th birthday on Dec. 14.

The diploma for Warner was suggested, and the idea was brought to Superintendent Roberto Padilla; the school board agreed.

“What’s remarkable about Ms. Warner is she dropped out of high school to take care of her family,” Padilla said during the ceremony. “And she didn’t just take care of her family. She took care of her community.”

Robinson, a New Windsor resident, also sacrificed.

He was 17 when his father, who had a 28-year career in the Army and National Guard, gave permission for him to enlist in September 1964.

At the time, he was attending George W. Wingate High School in Brooklyn.

“I knew that was my duty and my obligation as a United States citizen,” Robinson said.

In 1966, he deployed to Vietnam and was discharged in September 1967. He later had a career working as a mail handler at the Newburgh post office.

He would eventually deploy again, this time to Iraq in 2004 to 2005 as a member of the National Guard.

He celebrated his children and grandchildren receiving diplomas, which “meant everything in the world to a young person coming up,” he said.

“I feel elated that I was given this privilege to receive a diploma,” Robinson said. “It somewhat haunted me over the years not having one.”

lsparks@th-record.com