From the Washington County News, June 21, 2007 (Kansas)
Lifelong pursuit of a high school
diploma is cut short
LINN - On May 20, a gymnasium packed full of students, parents and visitors at the Linn High School commencement ceremony gave one man a standing ovation. The man’s name was Elmer H. Rodehorst. He was a Linn boy and was never able to go to high school because he had to stay home and help his father farm. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to go.
“He was just sick when school started. He just wanted to go so bad,” his wife said. A few years after leaving school, he married a Linn girl named Lil Bruggeman. They moved to Wichita where Elmer worked at an aircraft plant until he was drafted into military service on July 29, 1944. He was assigned to the United States Navy where he spent six months in boot camp at the Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Ill.
After attending basic engineering schools in Great Lakes and Richmond, Va, he was transported to Camp Shoemaker in San Francisco, Calif. He boarded the USS Evangel and went to Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands where he was assigned to the USS Midas.
“My service was in the ship’s crew,” Rodehorst said. His crew tended to the needs of the Midas. he achieved Motor Machinist Mate rank before returning to San Francisco on the Midas. In January, 1946, Rodehorst received Honorable Discharge from service and was transported to Stillwater, Okla. He received diesel mechanics training while in the military, but he wasn’t happy doing mechanical work. So he took an aptitude test at the Human Engineering Lab in Tulsa, Okla., which said he would be good at accounting and business. But before he could go to college, he had to get his GED.
“But after he got his GED, he was still wanting his high school
diploma,” his wife said.
He enrolled at Wichita State University and majored in business and accounting. He also took math classes at Wichita East High School. He had earned 81 credit hours when his GI entitlement expired and he could no longer afford to go to college. For the next 30 years, he was an accountant, credit manager and assistant treasurer for S. A. Long.
But his wife said he never got over the fact that he never received his high school diploma.
“Wichita wouldn’t give him one so he tried to find a way to get one,” she said. Then someone told him about Operation Recognition.
In 2002, Bill Graves created the program, which was designed to help men and women who had entered the military before graduation receive honorary diplomas from their high schools.
So
last summer, Rodehorst called Linn High School Principal Mike Savage and
told him about his desire to receive an honorary diploma from Linn. In
January, Superintendent Steve Joonas and Principal Savage met with Rodehorst
and found that it was very important for him to receive a diploma from
Linn High School.
Savage returned to Linn where he told the graduating class about Rodehorst and gave them some options.
“I told them we could present it on Memorial Day or at graduation. They unanimously voted to let him be a part of their graduation because they thought it was a neat way to honor his service,” Savage said.
He then sent Rodehorst a letter informing him that he would receive his
honorary diploma at Linn’s high school graduation in May. Rodehorst
was overjoyed to be receiving the diploma that he had wanted for so long
and on March 5, he replied back saying, “I really appreciated the
reaction by the students and the Board of Education . . . Thank you for
all of your efforts in lining this up. Without your help, it would not
happen.”
But just weeks later, Rodehorst died. “I was saddened. We looked forward to it,” said Savage. “But then we asked his family about presenting it posthumously, and they readily accepted.”
So, on graduation Saturday at 1 p.m., during a standing ovation, his wife Lil accepted her husband’s high school diploma nearly 60 years after he left school.
“It was sad. It was so sad to accept it for him because he wanted it so bad,” she said. Now that her husband is gone, she doesn’t know where to display the diploma. “That’s what I don’t know. I don’t know where to keep it. It’s on the table right now.”