"It was all done in secrecy, so I couldn't say goodbye to any of my friends," recalls Fossner, who is now 54 years old and living in Dix Hills, N.Y. "It was very traumatic. We pretended we were going on vacation. We gave the keys to our house to our neighbors and said, 'We'll see you in two or three weeks.' But we knew we weren't coming back."

In Israel, Fossner worked to help support her family, foregoing her dream of earning a college degree. That dream remained strong throughout the years, and this Mother's Day, May 12, she will graduate with a bachelor of science in accounting from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y.

It has not been an easy road. When Fossner and her family lived in Israel, she kept in touch with her childhood sweetheart through letters, and three years later they were reunited in the United States, where he was attending City College in New York. They married one year later.

Once again, Fossner went to work - this time to support herself and her husband as he completed an engineering degree. Then came children, a son and a daughter. When they started school, she went back to work as a bookkeeper, again putting the needs of her family ahead of her own dreams. When the children were in high school, however, she decided the time was right to finish her education. She enrolled initially at Suffolk County Community College and transferred to C.W. Post in 1998.

"Alice is a genuine and honest individual who has worked hard to complete what she set out to do," says Andrea Mojica, director of financial aid at the Brentwood Campus of Long Island University and classmate of Fossner's. "She is not only conscientious, but also motivated, demonstrating a zest for the acquisition of knowledge."

Indeed, Fossner speaks six languages fluently - Czech, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, German and English - and her dream has always been to work as a language teacher. But she chose accounting because of her experience and tuition assistance from DFCI Solutions in West Islip, where she works as an accounting supervisor. Still, she teaches Hebrew on a voluntary basis and hopes to branch out into other languages in the future. In what little spare time she has, Fossner organizes volunteers from her synagogue to visit patients at Huntington Hospital.

Fossner plans to continue working as an accountant, and perhaps pursue an MBA degree. And despite her myriad activities and charitable works, Fossner says she still feels the need to do more. "I'm just very grateful to a lot of people - to my family, my friends, to this country, to my employers," she says. "I just hope that I have the opportunity to give back some of these blessings."

Fossner will join 1,500 graduates at C.W. Post's 44rd annual commencement exercises on Mother's Day, Sunday, May 12, 2002. C.W. Post is one of six campuses of Long Island University, the eighth largest private university in the United States.