This post was originally published on the UC Magazine website.
UC Graduate Samuel Ochiel Obura is greeted on campus by Richard Harknett, head of UC’s political science department, 48 years after Mr. Obura finished his degree requirements. photo/Joseph Fuqua II.
UC graduate waited nearly a half century to walk in his commencement and finally receive his lost thesis.
By: John Bach
Samuel Obura Stands during the ceremony when recognized by UC President Santa Ono. photo/Joseph Fuqua II
Samuel Ochiel Obura’s journey to today’s commencement ceremony at the University of Cincinnati took him nearly 8,000 miles and 48 years.
A native of Kenya, Obura finished his master’s degree requirements in political science at UC in 1967. But due to an upheaval at the African Students Association, which helped sponsor his education, he had to cut short his pursuit of a doctorate degree to leave campus and return to Africa or risk losing his return ticket to his wife and children in east Africa.
Obura, then 34, had already spent several years away from his young family back home to pursue his bachelor’s degree in Canada followed by his master’s at UC.
Though he would go on to a long and successful career as a government official in Kenya, Obura left Cincinnati in such a rush that he never even took his trunk full of books, or —even more disheartening — the dissertation he had written on the “Constitutional Development in Kenya.” His thesis had been sent away for binding when he departed, so he was forced to leave it behind and would spend the next half century longing for the important document.
