LIMESTONE – One of the first graduates in the national Job Corps program was told to quit his job because of his bouts with epilepsy and to apply for disability payments.

But Eddie Hill of Memphis, Tenn., speaking Thursday at a Loring Job Corps Center graduation, said he kept working as a unionized meat cutter for 25 years to achieve his goal of owning his own business.

Hill, 53, spoke to about 40 graduating students during the Loring center’s sixth graduation.

In total, 210 students from throughout New England have earned high school degrees and learned trades since the center opened in early 1997.

The current student population is about 370 students, according to Job Corps officials.

Hill graduated from the Atterbury Job Corps in Indiana in 1966, entering the program a year after its inception.

He was trained in the meat-cutting trade.

“At age 22, I was told by my employer to take disability,” Hill said during a telephone interview before the Thursday graduation.

But Hill kept working for 25 years, saving enough money to buy a laundry and dry cleaning service in Memphis 12 years ago.

“You can do it,” was the message Hill said he planned to bring to the Job Corps graduates.

“When I came out of Job Corps, I got a job and set a goal to own my own business in 20 years,” said Hill. “And I did at age 41.”

Hill has been taking his Job Corps “can-do” story to audiences all over the country for the past two years in an apparent effort to give back to the program.

“I left Job Corps and I never looked back,” said Hill.

He attended the grand opening of a similar center two years ago in Memphis where he began to tell his story.

Ever since then, he’s been booked for speaking engagements.

Hill also credited the Job Corps program for giving him the skills he needed to have a career and to set long-term goals.