Age of discovery

The history lesson begins in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution.

The year of the student's birth.

Estelle Rees-Arroyo shifts in her seat and narrows her brown eyes, focusing laserlike on her bearded professor, soaking up his words with the help of tiny devices hidden in her ears.

"You and I can't imagine a world without automobiles," Martin Secker tells his class. A world without computers or television or cell phones.

Oh, but one of them can.

Rees-Arroyo is 90 years old, by far the oldest student on campus at California State University, Sacramento. She is taking history classes toward the bachelor's degree she never found time to get when she was younger.

History? Rees-Arroyo has lived it.

She was born in the Bay Area while World War I was raging. She remembers the hardships of the Great Depression, and the evils of the Holocaust. She can recall when the Bay Bridge was built 71 years ago, and laments the loss of the commuter ferry it replaced. During World War II and beyond, she and her late husband, Carlos, a civil engineer who worked in the oil business, traveled the globe to Venezuela and Japan and Saudi Arabia and Turkey, among other countries.

Now settled in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Rees-Arroyo treasures her memories and ponders a few regrets. She wishes she had been more affectionate with her three children, she says. She wishes she had finished her flying lessons and piloted a plane. She wishes she had earned a bachelor's degree.

Her husband, who graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, "joked that I never finished anything in my life," she says.

"I never forgot those words."

'There's no use sitting around'

Those words are partly why Rees-Arroyo started working toward a Bachelor of Arts.

"Just for the satisfaction of doing it," she explains, book bag in one hand and cane in the other as she walks the corridors of Brighton Hall on surgically repaired knees. "There's no use sitting around and watching TV. That's just too easy."

And so, after earning an associate's degree last spring at Sierra College's Grass Valley campus, she enrolled this fall at Sacramento State through the university's Sixty Plus program, which allows senior citizens to take classes virtually for free.

Rees-Arroyo is among 280 students in the program, and at 90 is "a record breaker," says Sixty Plus coordinator Vince Pantalone. "To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever come close," he says.

"We think she's amazing."

Yet her eldest son, for one, is anything but shocked.

"Nothing my mom does surprises me," says Paul Arroyo, who lives in Washington state. "I was quite pleased that she decided to do this. She's very independent, and she is never intimidated."

Perspective amid the youth

With her wizened face and fluff of white hair, Rees-Arroyo draws some curious looks amid a sea of youthful faces at Sacramento State.

Piloting her gold Buick to the capital city from her home more than an hour away, she takes courses Monday through Thursday. Last week, her first on campus, was "a bit overwhelming," she admits. Her biggest challenge? Making it from one class to another in a timely manner.

"My head works better than my body," says Rees-Arroyo, smiling at the youngsters who zip past her in the hallways. "The buildings are so far apart, and I move slowly. I'm hoping no one bumps into me and knocks me over." She also worries that her lack of computer savvy could hurt her.

Once she is settled in her seat at the front of the class, though, Rees-Arroyo fits in just fine.

Katerina Lagos, a lecturer who has Rees-Arroyo in her Greek history class, says older students are particularly attentive, and add something invaluable to the discussion.

"Their knowledge of the material is phenomenal," says Lagos. "They can say, 'This is what I saw. This is what I encountered.' That can be very powerful."

In Secker's European history class, which focuses on 1945 to the present, Rees-Arroyo is a walking history book.

"She's lived through all of this, so she will have opinions and insights that others can't possibly have," the professor says.

Sitting in a chair equipped with a soft blue cushion, Rees-Arroyo is a portrait of attention as Secker begins his lecture. She nods as he talks about communism and socialism and the changing economic, political and technological climates of decades past. She takes copious notes on lined paper. She raises her hand several times, asking Secker to expound on various ideas.

"It's all so interesting," she says later as she gathers up her books. "Everything he said reminded me of something."

Something to prove

After a day of classes, Rees-Arroyo admits that she is tired. It's a long drive back home, she says, "and the traffic is terrible." Her creaky knees and bad shoulder ache. Her car seems very far away.

But she has to get on the road, she says. She has some serious studying to do.

"I'm sure I won't get all A's," she says as she loads her things into the Buick. "I'll be happy with B's."

And when she finally finishes her degree, she'll look up at the sky and have a word or two with her late husband.

"Yes, I will," she promises. "I'm going to say, 'See, Carlos? I finished something after all.'"

Setting it straight: A Page A1 story Tuesday about a 90-year-old student at California State University, Sacramento, incorrectly identified Katerina Lagos as a lecturer. She is an assistant professor.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Cynthia Hubert can be reached at (916)321-1082 or chubert@sacbee.com.