A 75-year-old Florida man has just received his high school diploma decades after his education was derailed by severe abuse that he endured as a teenager while attending a notoriously brutal reform school.
As he recounted to the local news outlets WTVT and WTSP, Eddie Horne’s stroll across the graduation stage at a ceremony Thursday at St Petersburg high school in Pinellas county, Florida, fulfilled a goal that he set for himself after fighting to overcome the trauma inflicted on him beginning at age 14 at the state-run Dozier School for Boys.
He says he hopes his time in the media spotlight can serve as an inspiration to others who have grappled with substantial life setbacks.
Horne was a student in 1964 and 1965 at the Dozier school, which became synonymous with molestation, vicious beatings and neglect.
“It was horrible – it was horrible,” Horne said to both WTVT and WTSP in describing his and his brothers’ experience at the school. “I don’t know how many licks I got. I didn’t count. I didn’t count, but it was horrifying.
“And they just came down like they’re swinging a baseball bat on you.”
Horne eventually dropped out of high school as a sophomore to financially support his family, the Pinellas county public education system said in a statement cited by WTSP.
“They weren’t teaching you nothing,” Horne remarked, according to WTVT. “That’s why I lost out on a lot of my education.”
Nonetheless, to keep a promise he made to himself when he dropped out, Horne signed up to pursue his high school diploma through a compensation program for victims of abuse at Dozier and the similar Okeechobee school. The Florida legislature passed the bill creating the program in June 2024, and it aimed to provide $20m to the schools’ victims.
More than 100 boys are known to have died at the Dozier school alone between 1900 and 1973, as WTVT reported. Investigations and accounts from survivors established physical abuse at the school was widespread, and it was shuttered in 2011.
Horne participated in Thursday’s graduation ceremony and attained his diploma after completing the compensation program’s requirements.
“Now I got it, … I’m happy,” Horne said to WTSP afterward. “I feel like I can do anything I want to do now.”
The Pinellas public education superintendent, Kevin Hendrick, told WTVT that he was gratified at Horne’s academic comeback.
“To see somebody who’s been through that have this moment tonight and just to see his joy, his passion, his energy – it’s rewarding,” Hendrick said.
WTSP reported that Horne had applied to work as a criminal justice specialist at the county courthouse. He said to WTVT that his words of wisdom to his fellow, younger graduates was: “Don’t let no obstacle come in your way.”
“Keep on fighting,” Horne added, according to WTSP. “Don’t give up your ship. If it’s sinking – don’t give it up. Just keep going.”
