A 72-year-old mother of four is proving it is never too late to pursue a dream, as she prepares to graduate from medical school and start a three-year residency. Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft, the mother of ABC News meteorologist Ginger Zee, decided to follow her ambition of becoming a doctor after her husband narrowly survived a brain hemorrhage in 2020.
A Life-Changing Event
Speaking to The Washington Post, Zuidgeest-Craft said the incident made her realise that 'life is short.' She and her husband, Carl Craft, initially had differing ideas about what to do next. While Carl wanted to travel, Zuidgeest-Craft, then in her late 60s, knew she wanted to study. 'He thought I was insane,' she recalled.
Combining Dreams
The couple eventually found a way to combine their aspirations. Zuidgeest-Craft used her retirement funds to pay for tuition at the St. James School of Medicine in Anguilla. At the end of May, she will receive a doctor of medicine degree, becoming the school's oldest-ever graduate. In July, she will begin a family medicine residency at Trinity Health Medical Center in Muskegon, Michigan.
'When you have to do it for work ... you feel like, “I got to do this so that I can pay my rent,”' she told The Washington Post. 'I want to do this because I really enjoy this.'
Support and Challenges
Her husband joined her during clinical rotations in Chicago, West Virginia, and South Texas. During a rotation in McAllen, Texas, an attending doctor told her she was too talented for her degree to be merely a 'trophy.' A month later, she learned she had been accepted into the residency program.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Zuidgeest-Craft explained that she delayed medical school because of 'life.' After her undergraduate degree, she considered medicine but instead married, had two children, and became a neonatal nurse practitioner. At 35, she divorced, took the Medical College Admission Test, and applied to medical school but was denied. She later remarried and had her youngest child at 49. By 50, she assumed her dream was 'done.'
A Mother's Inspiration
Ginger Zee told Entertainment Weekly that her mother's prior career prepared her well for medical school. 'I always say with tornadoes and meteorology, that when you go to school for it, it’s one thing, but when you storm chase, it’s another,' Zee said. 'That’s how you learn how to be a great meteorologist. And I always use the analogy that if you had a doctor who had never worked on a patient before, you wouldn’t want that doctor, if they were only from a textbook. She already had 45 years of being in the hospital setting.'
