Ninety-three-year-old World War II veteran Bob Lockard finally earned his high school diploma some 75 years after he quit Circleville High School in Columbus, Ohio in order to work as a paramedic in the Civilian Conservation Corps, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
He was then drafted into the Army Air Corps in March 1943. In the service, he first was a cook, but following heavy losses in the Battle of the Bulge, he retrained as a rifleman in the infantry and narrowly escaped death in battle numerous times.
Lockard told NBC4i.com that he remembers the exact day he came home from war after fighting in central Europe, Northern France and Normandy.
"If it hadn't been raining and a sloppy mess, I think I would've kissed the ground I was so homesick," he said.
Lockard received the right to a high school diploma due to a 2006 law passed in Ohio that allows districts to award them to veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam who left school for service and meet certain criteria, according to the Dispatch.
The school even gave him his own, formal graduation announcements to send out.
Lockard appears to be the first in Circleville, which is near Columbus, to be so honored, and Superintendent Jonathan Davis told the paper that "Bob is very excited about this honor that was 74 years in the making, and so are we."
Dressed in his cap and gown, Lockard walked across the stage to receive his diploma on Sunday, and can now say that along with being a World War II Victory Medal recipient, he is a high school graduate as a member of the class of 2018, NBC4i.com reported.
"It means everything to me," Lockard said as he fought back tears. "Everything. All these years man, I thought about this."
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