NEWS
The 94-year-old student of the University of Naples Keiser Bob Bloom will go down in history on Friday when he becomes the oldest graduate in the history of the university.
Bloom will join about 70 alumni at the opening ceremony to be held at the Neapolitan resort of Ritz-Carlton at 6 p.m.
While Bloom attended college at the University of Maryland in 1946, he never received a degree and instead joined the U.S. Air Force, where he served for five years and was honored in 1953.
In his life, Bloom has made many achievements, both professionally and personally. In the 1950s, he was a successful salesman in Washington, D.C., selling Valley Forge beer to a distribution company owned by his mother.
He later co-founded the construction company Blum and Cowen Construction, which built housing estates in Montgomery County, Maryland. He even spent time as a guest columnist for the Naples Daily News and the now defunct Islander News newspaper in Naples.
However, Bloom says the only achievement that has always come to him is getting a college degree.
“I spent 70 years looking for a job, and the only thing I could list in the“ Education ”section of these applications is a high school diploma,” Bloom said. “I’ve always felt that something was missing in my life without it [a college degree]».
Bloom credits his wife Connie and daughter Randy Kashi for helping him master the technology needed by today’s college students. Connie Bloom, who previously owned a clothing store on the island of Marco, now teaches computer technology to seniors and has helped Bloom study several computer and technology systems used at the University of Keiser.
Bloom received a bachelor of science degree in interdisciplinary research at the opening ceremony of the University of Naples at Kaiser and was selected by colleagues for comment at the ceremony.
The opening ceremony at the University of Kaiser in Naples will take place at 18:00 in the Neapolitan resort of Ritz-Carlton, located at 280 Vanderbilt Beach Road, Naples, FL 34108.
WATCH interview with Bloom in the video above.
