98-Year-Old WWII Veteran Finally Gets High School Diploma In Texas Ceremony

Donald J. Huisenga was supposed to get his high school diploma in Iowa in 1943, but missed graduation because he was off to basic military training three months before school was out.

Eighty years later, Huisenga, 98, received his high school diploma at a special ceremony in San Angelo, Texas, on Wednesday (January 5), according to the San Angelo-Standard Times.

Huisenga served in the U.S. Army from 1943-1945. He was injured in 1944 by an artillery fire and found by enemy troops who transported him to a German prisoner of war camp, where he was for eight months. After the Army, he returned to a "normal life" but he was still regretful he never graduated from high school, he told a veterans affairs social worker.

"He was telling me about his time as a prisoner of war, at which point he mentioned that he had never graduated high school," Tess Gooding, a medical social worker at the San Angelo Veterans Affairs Clinic, told the San Angelo-Standard Times.

Huisenga moved to San Angelo in November 2021.

Gooding reached out to Huisenga's high school in Iowa to see what they could do about his diploma.

"I was in my office when my administrative assistant answered the phone. ... She jumped up and said, 'Kevin, you need to take this phone call right now.' ... "My answer was absolutely yes," said Kevin Litterer, principal of East Sac High School, formerly Auburn High School, in Lake View, Iowa.

Litterer worked with school officials to track down Huisenga's old documents. He secured a flight to Texas as well. The ceremony to honor Huisenga was held on January 5.

"On behalf of the East Sac County Community School District, the East Sac County Board of Education representing Auburn High School, the state of Iowa, and a grateful nation, it is my pleasure to inform you all that Donald J. Huisenga has met the requirements for graduation from Auburn High School both in the classroom and on the battlefield," Litterer said. He then handed Huisenga his diploma.

"I made it. I always hoped that I would get a diploma. I am pleased as punch. I'm so pleased, I couldn't be any more pleased," Huisenga said.