A former nurse practitioner, Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft enrolled in medical school when she was 69
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/Zuidgeest-Craft-051526-2-eb1d4695f00246008600866f7ed41f3f.jpg "Ginger Zee’s Mom Graduates Medical School at 72, Setting Records")
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NEED TO KNOW
- Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft, the mother of ABC News meteorologist Ginger Zee, is set to graduate from medical school at the end of May
- She had previously postponed her goal of becoming a doctor, but revisited the idea after her husband’s brain hemorrhage
- “I hope that everybody learns from this,” Zee said in a message about her mother’s example
The mother of ABC News meteorologist Ginger Zee is proof that it's never too late to achieve a lifelong goal.
Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft, 72, will graduate medical school by the end of the month, becoming her school’s oldest-ever graduate, according to The Washington Post. After graduation, she'll start a three-year residency at a hospital in Michigan this July, when she'll turn 73.
“I am totally setting records,” she said while speaking CBS affiliate WZZM, adding that as far as she can tell, she'll also become "the oldest ever graduating medical student in the world" and is already in touch with Guinness World Records.
“There's some people that aren't meant to retire, it's not part of them,” Zuidgeest-Craft added. “That's probably me.”
In her early 30s, Zuidgeest-Craft worked as a nurse practitioner while raising two kids, including Ginger. She had plans to become a doctor by age 40, but later remarried and went on to welcome two more children.
“That [going to med school] didn't work out because we could not make a baby to save our lives,” Zuidgeest-Craft told WZZM. “I went through all the stuff that so many of my patients had had to deal with. We had our first daughter together at 42, and my next one was when I was 49."
It wasn't until her husband survived a brain hemorrhage about six years ago that Zuidgeest-Craft revisited the idea of fulfilling her dream.
“It hit me like, ‘Oh, my God, this life is short,' ” she told The Washington Post.
At age 69, after she retired from nursing, Zuidgeest-Craft enrolled at a medical school in the Caribbean, and then did her clinical rotations in Chicago, West Virginia, New York and Texas, per WZZM.
Daughter Ginger, offered words of support for her mom in a video message shared by WZZM.
“It's most important that you know how inspired I have been my whole life, not just in what you're doing now, but in your everyday, in who you are, and of course, still going after your dreams at this age,” she said in the clip.
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“I know the age is kind of the focus, and probably you don't want that part to be, but it really is incredible to watch,” Zee continued. “I hope that everybody learns from this. The thing that you taught me is that you really can't say 'can't.' Don't let anybody tell you it's not possible, because it is, and Dawn will do it. I promise. I love you, Mom.”