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3/19/2009 9:50 AM
Veteran Gets Surprise Honor: A High School Diploma Sent to serve in Pearl Harbor during World War II, Thill lost his chance to graduate with his Humboldt High School Class of 1942. However, thanks to a friend and to the St. Paul Schools, Wednesday was Thill's surprise graduation day. It may have taken 67 years, but Wednesday, Richard Thill got his diploma. Sent to serve in Pearl Harbor during World War II, Thill lost his chance to graduate with his Humboldt High School Class
However, thanks to a friend and to the St. Paul Schools, Wednesday was Thill's surprise graduation day. For a boy from St. Paul's Baker Street, the Navy promised excitement and a snazzy sailor hat. But Dec. 7, 1941, Thill found out what wearing the hat really meant. While his friends at Humboldt High were in their senior year, Thill was a sailor on a gun crew on the U.S.S. Ward -- the destroyer that fired the first shot of World War II. At Pearl Harbor, he saw the Arizona go down. "The battleship that you hear
After coming home, he went to St. John's University -- no high school diploma required for a servicemen, but he still wished he had one. He thought about it a lot, and talked about it a little. "He mentioned that he had been a student here at Humboldt, but he never got to graduate because of World War II," said Larry Ryan, Thill's friend from the North St. Paul American Legion. Ryan worked with Humboldt's Principal to help Thill do just that -- graduate "We
After speaking to kids about Pearl Harbor, Thill finally got the degree he earned long ago. "I really love this. This is something I really treasure," said Thill. It was a proud moment for him, and his wife Gloria, who said the sailor hat did help him get the girl. "He's such an honorable man. Such an honorable man," she said.
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