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Charles Tolles left high school a dozen years ago to take care of his ailing grandmother. He recently returned to school for a GED and graduated with scholarship-level grades.

Charles Tolles never considered himself dumb, never really had trouble finding gainful work.

But he wrestled with a word, a label that hung around if only in his head.

Dropout.

If it didn’t exactly haunt him, it also never quite went away.

“People would ask me what high school I went to,” he says. “I didn’t feel right telling them because I didn’t graduate.”

As a youngster, he did well in his course work, particularly math and science, which he enjoyed. Charles felt comfortable in the classroom.

Life beyond that troubled him. Events conspired to push him into dropping out.

After his mother died when he was age 10, Charles lived with his paternal grandparents in Omaha. One day, his grandmother fell in her bedroom and, with her husband at work driving a taxi, remained on the floor until Charles got home from the school.

Around the same time, he suffered a beating at the hands of four teens. He described the atmosphere around the city’s Central High School as one of violence.

Mr. Tolles winces in recalling his thinking at the time. “I was just afraid of school, that was the bottom line,” he says.

A few days into his junior year, and over the objections of his grandparents, he stopped attending school. He helped care for his grandmother and got jobs to boost the household’s meager income.

From the first day, he regretted his decision. Though Charles figured he’d return to get his education, a dozen years passed without that happening.

With his father returning to Omaha to help care for Charles’ grandparents, the young man moved to Falls City, Neb., and he picked up work in electronics and copier repair. He thought of resuming school, but rent and other bills needed paying.

This year, with a bit of money saved and a desire for a new direction, Mr. Tolles, now 30, moved to St. Joseph. He wanted to be nearer to his 7-year-old son, who lives with the boy’s mother near Edgerton, Mo. But he also wanted to tie up some loose ends.

“I’ve never considered myself an unintelligent person,” he says. “But I felt I needed to kind of redeem myself.”

That began with a call in June to the Ruth Huston Learning Center. A program at that St. Joseph facility prepares people to take the General Educational Development test, more commonly known as the GED.

Mr. Tolles admits to some nerves. It had been a long spell since he last entered a classroom.

“I was worried about not doing well or making a fool of myself,” he says. “With all the help there, there’s no way you can.”

Sue Creason, a teacher in the program since 1999, sees students arrive with all sorts of motivations and skills. In Mr. Tolles, she saw an immediate enthusiasm.

“He came in on a high level,” she said, noting he did well on his initial placement test. The other indicator of desire is always attendance, and he proved faithful in showing up for the night sessions.

The placement test indicated a need to brush up on fractions and improve his writing. Over the next few weeks, he wrote four essays for the adult educators.

On July 23, he entered a Missouri Western State University classroom with about 20 other people to take the GED exam. He was told to prepare for eight hours of testing. He finished in about five, feeling good about the day. More than two weeks would pass before the renewed student could be sure.

Results arrive with all the ceremony of a mail delivery. Didn’t matter to Charles. They showed that he scored in the 98th percentile for the nation in math and in the 96th percentile in writing and science.

The results proved far in excess of what GED folks call “scholarship-level” scores.

“That was a big morale booster,” Mr. Tolles says. “It felt nice to know that I was actually college material.”

Ms. Creason says people enter the GED program most often to find a better job, but sometimes the motivation is personal fulfillment. For many, the regular school experience didn’t work out. “Sometimes, life gets in the way,” she says.

Mr. Tolles insists his son proved a factor. Casey might have an occasion to want to abandon his education.

“I want to be able to tell him I finished school,” the father says. “Can I be a role model for him?”

Since getting his results, Mr. Tolles has gone to work for a St. Joseph company that provides cleanup work after fire and water damage. The logistics and money didn’t work out for attending college this fall, but he has hopes for the future.

“I always worried that I waited too long,” he says. “Honestly, it’s never too late.”

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.