She never forgot the fateful day in 1961 that several classmates showed up at her door to seize her National Honor Society membership and deliver a message: She had been deemed “no longer honorable.”

Joanne Johnson Grimes was 15 and pregnant. School administrators forced her to drop out of Burlington City High School in New Jersey her junior year. Then, her classmates delivered an emotional blow that would stick with her for more than six decades.

“I will never forget that,” she recalled. “They gave me a message that henceforth my name would no longer be on the honor society rolls. I was crushed.”

Life changed drastically after her mother’s death

It had already been a tumultuous year for Johnson. Her mother, Anna, 39, died from a heart attack. Without a strict disciplinarian at home, Johnson began spending more time with her boyfriend, Harold, also a junior.

“I was left to my own devices,” Johnson said. “My life changed in ways I could have never imagined. I made some decisions that weren’t wise.”

Initially, Johnson tried to hide her pregnancy. When the news got out, it sent shockwaves through the South Jersey community. Johnson was a popular honors student and had plans to attend college and possibly become a teacher.

“People were saying, ‘No, not Joanne Johnson.’ I was the epitome of a good child,” she said.

When school officials learned about her pregnancy, Johnson said she was forced to withdraw. However, she said, there were no repercussions for Harold, a star athlete who was allowed to remain in school but ultimately dropped out as well.

“There was absolutely no consequences for him. I was told that I could never return,” she said. “That’s the way it went in 1961.”

Johnson’s father wanted her to move away, have the baby, and place it up for adoption — then return to finish high school. Instead, she convinced him to let her marry Harold.

Just a few months after marrying, Johnson went into early labor, and two days later, the couple’s newborn daughter, Denise Marion, died. They later had a son, Gregg, and divorced after 23 years.

Meanwhile, Johnson went back to school. She earned a GED and then an associate’s degree from Rowan College at Burlington County in 1987, and she worked as an administrative assistant and substitute teacher. She also got remarried and settled in Palmyra with her husband, Robert Grimes, who died in 2008.

But the memory of what happened to her at 15 stuck. Over the years, Johnson kept in touch with high school classmates, attended class reunions, and shared her story with family and friends. She doesn’t want to be remembered only as the teenager who was kicked out of the honor society.

“Growing up, she told me this story a million times,” said her granddaughter, Alexzandra Robertson, 30. “She would say, ‘Don’t let my mistakes become your mistakes.’”

In June, a few months before her 80th birthday, Johnson mustered up the courage to contact the school’s guidance department. She wanted to correct the record.

“I never stopped being angry and resentful over this,” she said. “I had made a mistake, but that did not make me not honorable. I wanted to fix that.”

Her name was no longer on the honor society roll

When Johnson called the school, she spoke with Janelle Simmons, an administrative assistant in the guidance department, who told her that there was no record of Johnson being an honor society member. Simmons promised to look into it, but Johnson assumed that nothing could be done.

A few weeks later, Johnson received a phone call.

She was summoned to the school, where Simmons and Alyssa Anderson, the honor society faculty adviser, presented her with a blue-and-gold honor society cord, a pin, and a membership certificate. They held an induction ceremony just for Johnson, who burst into tears and joked that she would wear the pin on her pajamas.

Simmons asked which name she should write on the certificate, and Johnson answered: “There’s no question about it. Joanne Johnson earned this pin.”

‘The day I got my honor back’

Johnson returned to the school again recently — invited by Anderson, a history teacher — to address the new group of honor society inductees. Anderson said Johnson had a “story worth hearing” and wanted her “to have her moment.”

In a 15-minute speech, Johnson choked back tears, telling the room of about 150 people how it felt to be reinducted to their honor society.

“I got my pin, and that day with my pin I finally got my honor back,” she said. “I no longer was a person who was dishonorable. It may have taken 63 years, but it happened.”

There were tears and gasps when Johnson described how she meekly surrendered her membership. It would have been wrong back then to balk at authority, she said.

Johnson gave the students two charges: Be kind to others, and never give up.

“Let me be an example to you. Never give up on your dreams. If you really really want it, don’t give up on it,” she said.

She received a standing ovation. Later at a reception, students peppered Johnson with questions and posed for photos with her.

“I thought it was so compelling,” said honor society president Thomas Freeman, 17, an aspiring actor. “I feel like she had been really wronged.”

Madeleine DiSimone, 16, a junior, said she was stunned and inspired by Johnson’s story.

“She deserved her membership,” said DiSimone, an aspiring marine conservationist. “Her getting pregnant didn’t change that.”

Adam Davis, a spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, which oversees honor society chapters, applauded the school for turning a past wrong into a teachable moment. Today, the organization has disciplinary guidelines, and students are entitled to due process and cannot be automatically dismissed.

Johnson, who stays active by volunteering at her church and a food bank, and jitterbugging with friends on Friday nights, said she was pleased with the outcome.

She has no hard feelings against the classmates who took her pin. She doesn’t even recall their names, she said.

”We were all victims of that time,” she said. “I forgive them.”

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