This Article written by Dan McCullough, was originally printed in the Cape Cod Times and describes the evening my Dad (Frank) got his high school diploma after over 50 years. Click Here for Photos of that evening.

A Gunner on a World War 2 Bomber Collects a Diploma
by Dan McCullough
From the Cape Cod Times

This may be hard for some of you to believe, but when I was a little kid, in terms of education, the highest aspirations of my parents and the parents of kids in my neighborhood was that their children would graduate from high school. That's
right: high school.

I cannot today think of an adult in my neighborhood who had graduated from high school, including my parents. For them, the goal that was held so high for us was that we would be able to get a high school diploma. Then we'd be all set.

"Once you get that high school diploma,"my father would say, "they can never take it away from you. When you apply for a job, you'll get it ahead of the guy next to you. Don't worry about that."

Neither he nor my mother thought that they would ever, in their lifetimes, see the little ones running around their small
inner-city house in hand-me-down clothing accumulate, among them, 14 college degrees. Our simply graduating from high school was their dream.

So, to understand the thrust behind today's story, you need to keep in mind the importance of that high school diploma in the mid-century America of 50 years ago.

Frank Wenberg of West Dennis has lived on Cape Cod for most of his life, working for the post office in various locations here. Now in his 70s, he's a guy whose had, all in all, a good life.

He and June, his wife of all these decades, have raised two children, John and Laura, and have two grandchildren as well. Frank's a quiet and content man, not the type to complain, or carry a lot of regret about things in the past.

On Dec. 7,1941, when Frank was in high school in New Rochelle, NY, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and from that day forward, the life of every citizen in America was irrevocably changed, including the life of teenager Frank Wenberg.

The United States had no Air Force at the time; the American planes that flew with the white star on their wings were the olive-drab craft of the U.S. Army Air Corps. The last line of the official song of today's U.S Air Force, the familiar"Off we go into the wild blue yonder..." was changed in 1947, with the creation of the Air Force, from "...nothing'll stop the Army Air Corps"to"...nothing'll stop the U.S. Air Force!

The veterans who served in the old Army Air Corps are a rare breed today, not only because of the high casualty rate of flying in World War II but also because it's been over half a century since that organization even existed.

Frank Wenberg is one of those guys. If he were to walk across the campus of the Air Force Academy today with his
badges from the Army Air Corps on his jacket, those young men and women would flock around him with great deference and respect. He wouldn't have to worry about his lunch money and, believe me, he wouldn't be able to buy a drink in the
pub later on.

He knows this, and is proud to have served his country in the most wide-scale war in the history of this planet. As a tail-gunner on one of the old B-17s, he had one of the most dangerous jobs in the war. He's never been a guy to talk much about the war, and, as I've said, not a guy to complain about his life. He knows how lucky he is to be alive and
to have a famlly.

But once in a while he would mention something from those old days, something that had stayed on his mind for 50
years.

0n a late spring day in 1943, with flowers in bloom along the waterfront and the sailboats of the Westchester gentry freshly painted and launched into the warm waters of Long Island Sound, Frank Wenberg's graduating class at New
Rochelle High School marched up to the stage in their caps and gowns and proudly accepted their precious diplomas.

But on that day, he was not among them. He was a continent away, just a boy really, a long way from home, sitting in a cold gun blister, a mile in the air, with death brushing
his skin every day.

Over the years since his return, just once in a while, when talking about the 1940s, he would let slip to his brother Carl that it was Corps too bad that he never finished his high school education, having dropped out to join the Army.

So when Carl heard last year of a congressional act that made World War 11 veterans eligible to receive their high school diplomas if their education had been interrupted by military service, he went into action. He made some calls, got some information and enlisted the able help of Mary McDonough , director of instruction in the Dennis-Yarmouth School District. She really got on the case, communicating back and forth with the federal government, the people down at New Rochelle High School, and Tony Pierantozzi, the Dennis-Yarmouth superintendent of schools.

In February, Pierantozzi called Randy Wallin, principal over at M.E. Small Elementary School in Yarmouth. He told Wallin that he had heard that he was related to Frank Wenberg.

"Yes,"Wallin said."He's my uncle - my mother's brother."

He asked Wallin if he would like to be the person to present his uncle his high school diploma from New Rochelle High School at a ceremony here on Cape Cod in March. He jumped at the chance.

From the time he was a little boy, Wallin had come to Cape Cod to visit his uncle Frank, auntie June and his cousins. He would be honored to be the one to deliver the document.

"I knew that it bothered him that he didn't get his diploma,"Wallin said a few days ago.

So last week, on the Wednesday of the week of the big bad bear of a snowstorm that never came, Randy Wallin stood at the front of the Dennis-Yarmouth School Committee meeting over at the Station Avenue Elementary School in South Yarrmouth with a big lump in his throat and a diploma from a school 200 miles away in his hands.

His, uncle, Frank was called and the young teenager from the class of'43 came forward to get his diploma. Accepting his sheepskin, Frank looked out over the faces of the crowd there., Among the crowd were his wife, his children, his
grandchildren, his sister and brother-in-law, his brother Carl and his wife and child, and grandchild, niece, nephew and their spouses.

And when Frank Wenberg, no longer a high school dropout, quietly and humbly said his thank you, people in the room that night, who had never heard the story before, found themselves digging for Kleenex.

Several members of the usually-all-business school committee were blinking their eyes, and it wasn't because the lights were too bright. And when the whole room rose to their feet in a standing ovation as Frank returned to his seat, strangers in the audience as well as family members were visibly moved to tears, wiping their eyes between claps.

In a couple of months, people will be walking up on stages at Harvard, MIT, Boston University and Providence College to get their medical degrees, law degrees, fancy degrees in chemistry and philosophy. In the great pomp and circumstance of the day, their families will be very proud of their accomplishments.

But none more proud than the family of Frank Wenberg was last week in that room at the little elementary school over in Yarmouth.