“That’s going to be probably the highest honor of her life,” David Johnson, 60, said. “The fact that she gets to graduate now, after all this time, is going to melt her heart. She deserves it.”

Elizabeth Johnson became the first female to attend WSSU on the GI Bill when she returned home from WWII, where she had been part of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion of the Women’s Army Corps.

The battalion, of 855 women, was the only all-black female battalion stationed overseas during the war.

“She’s a hero to me,” her granddaughter Shandra Bryant said. “It’s pretty special to get to 99 and even more so when you look at her history in the Army and as an educator.”

Elizabeth Johnson’s military journey started by chance after she was inspired by an “I Want You for the U.S. Army” poster lying on the ground near her mailbox.

After graduating from Atkins High School in Winston-Salem — the closest school to Elkin for black students — Elizabeth Johnson joined the Army in 1943.

She was stationed in Kentucky for a year and a half before going overseas to England in the midst of the war, where she and the other women were tasked with handling the backlog of mail.