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University Of Florida Awards Honorary Ph.D. To Its Former Groundskeeper Tom Petty

NEWPORT, UNITED KINGDOM – JUNE 22: Tom Petty of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performs on the main stage on day 2 of The Isle of Wight Festival at Seaclose Park on June 22, 2012 in Newport, Isle of Wight. (Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images)

|Samir Hussein/Getty Images

Tom Petty was awarded with an honorary Ph.D. from the University Of Florida, as the Associated Press reports.

Petty, who passed away in 2017, once worked as a groundskeeper on the UF campus in Gainesville when he was younger and still trying to make it in the music industry, though he was never enrolled. The school's board of trustees unanimously voted to give Petty a posthumous doctoral degree in music at a meeting on Friday.

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