A High School Graduate at 100

Sarah Neuman Resident graduates from James Madison High School

Benjamin Parmet, a 100-year-old resident at Jewish Home Lifecare Sarah Neuman Center, was recently awarded an honorary high school diploma from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, where he was a student when the school opened in 1925.  Mr. Parmet had to leave school in 1927 to go to work and help support his family. According to his son, Jerome Parmet of Scarsdale, “my dad always longed to finish high school … it forever bothered him that he never achieved that goal.”  

That lifelong ambition was achieved last week when, Mr. Parmet, dressed in a suit and tie and James Madison baseball cap and with a broad smile on his face accepted an honorary degree from Richard Kossoff, co-president of the James Madison Alumni Association. High School Principal Joseph Gogliomella and Assistant Principal Jodie Cohen joined other representatives from the school in traveling from Brooklyn to attend the joyous occasion at Sarah Neuman Center in Mamaroneck.

Presentation of the honorary degree was organized by Bob Goldberg, a fellow James Madison alumni, who met Mr. Parmet while serving as a volunteer at Sarah Neuman. “A wonderful friendship ensued,” Mr. Goldberg said and he contacted the James Madison Alumni Association to let them know his centenarian friend regretted that he had never earned his high school diploma.

Coincidentally, a Madison Alumni Association editor, Frieda Gottfried Weitz, met Mr. Parmet’s son, Jerome, who mentioned his father’s regret at not graduating from high school. The Alumni association contacted James Madison administration who worked with the Board of Education to have an honorary diploma issued.

Other distinguished graduates of James Madison High School include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and four Nobel Laureates. Jewish Home Lifecare’s own Dr. Leslie Libow, Distinguished Clinical Professor, is also a James Madison alumnus. “The question,” Dr. Libow says, “is how does a non-specialized, public high school ( not Stuyvesant and not Bronx Science nor Brooklyn Tech-not Horace Mann, etc) produce such an accomplished list? The answer is not hard to come up with. This is part of the American dream…”

The Jewish Home Lifecare family congratulates Mr. Parmet on achieving this goal.