Texas surgeon granted Tufts bachelor's degree after 47 years

Tufts University has helped a Texas surgeon take care of some unfinished business, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

In 1959, Dr. David Lichtman, now chairman of the orthopedics department at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, enrolled in a three-year undergraduate program at Tufts that would result in a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology once he completed medical school, the story says. But he left Tufts, transferring to the State University of New York while a medical student and making a commitment to the Navy.

After earning his medical degree, he spent 30 years as a surgeon in the Navy, retiring as a rear admiral in 1994. But he never got his bachelor's.

"I didn’t think I needed a bachelor’s degree because I figured I was going to graduate from medical school," Lichtman, now 67, told the Star-Telegram. "But because it went unfinished, I used to have dreams that I went back to Tufts."

Linda Dixon, secretary to the board of trustees at Tufts and a classmate of Dr. Lichtman’s, said the university decided to award him a four-year degree after hearing his story and getting letters of recommendation, according to the Star-Telegram.

"There are a handful of individuals like Dr. Lichtman who would lead very exemplary lives and many years later they or their children would think, 'Gosh, it would be great to finish that degree,' "  she told the Start-Telegram. "This is very unusual. But I’m sure Dr. Lichtman is very deserving since he was granted the degree."