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A trio of Iowa veterans received their high school diplomas – and two even walked across the graduation stage – some six decades after they left school early to serve in the US military.
Vietnam War-era vets Robert David Holliday, Richard Hill and Dennis Snyder were all honored last week during the pomp and circumstance at Muscatine High School.
“Getting it now, I look back and I think, ‘Well, everything that I did with the service and everything was all worth it,'” Snyder told WQAD. “Being here today is really, really worth it.”
He recalled the stream of emotions when he found out he was getting the memento.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Snyder, 78, said in an interview with KWQC.
“I told my wife, and she said, ‘What?’ Of course, she started crying right away. I was just shocked.”
Snyder and Hill, 81, were the first of more than 300 graduates to walk across the stage at Sunday’s ceremony – with the two receiving a raucous round of applause.
The pair both grew up in Muscatine, which is about 35 miles from Iowa City, and Snyder even attended the high school until he left classes to enlist at 17 years old.
Snyder served in the Navy from 1961 to 1965 and was stationed in Pearl Harbor, while Hill’s deployment to Vietnam came to an end in 1969.
“I don’t know how to accept it, you know, because I didn’t get a chance, going through school,” Hill told WQAD.
Holliday, 85, wasn’t at the graduation, but he was also recognized on May 14 when school officials presented him with his diploma at home surrounded by family.
The veteran would have graduated in 1958, but left school early to join the US Army Corps of Engineers, where he served in Vietnam between 1959 and 1961, according to WQAD.
He also served in the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Germany.
Eight veterans with ties to Muscatine have received their diplomas over the past three years, the county’s veterans’ affairs agency said.
“I’m just so excited that he was able to get this opportunity,” said Snyder’s daughter Julie Lerch, according to KWQC, “and then he could have the entire grandstand and the entire graduating class behind him.”
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