At 72, Chicago woman becomes medical school’s oldest-ever graduate after bucket-list promise

Chicago: When Carl Craft nearly died from a brain hemorrhage, he and his wife Dawn reviewed their bucket list. Carl wanted to travel. Dawn said she wanted to go to medical school.“He thought I was crazy,” she said.

This month, Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft graduated with a doctorate in medicine from St. James School of Medicine in Anguilla, becoming the school’s oldest-ever graduate at 72.

The dream began early in Zuidgeest-Craft’s life and led to a career as a nurse practitioner and pediatric educator. She married and had two children, putting medical school on hold. In her 40s, she divorced, remarried Carl, and spent the next decade raising two more children. The medical school ambition faded — until Carl’s brain hemorrhage.

“At that point I realized it had to happen now, or never,” she said.Zuidgeest-Craft used her retirement savings to pay tuition at St. James, where the MCAT requirement is waived. The path wasn’t easy. She failed biochemistry in year one but pushed through with support from Carl and classmates who remember her from dorm living, movie nights, and yoga sessions on the beach.

Her training included clinical rotations in Chicago and West Virginia, plus a stint in South Texas where a physician encouraged her to pursue residency based on her aptitude.

Now a mother of four and grandmother of three, Zuidgeest-Craft will turn 73 soon. She says the work feels different this time.