A diploma at age 92

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Former Western High School Principal Merle Horwedel (left) presents Emmett Bailey with his honorary high school diploma at Princeton’s Burger King restuarant Friday while family and friends clap and cheer. Bailey was not able to graduate with his class because he didn’t have $1.60 for two notebooks he needed.

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PRINCETON — There was no pomp and very little circumstance at last week’s graduation ceremony, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the place when Emmett Bailey finally received his high school diploma.

Bailey, 92, was surrounded by friends and family at the Princeton Burger King Friday when he was presented with an honorary diploma by Merle Horwedel, a former teacher and principal of Western High School in Buda.

It all began more than 70 years ago. Bailey’s family lived on an Indian reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D. Bailey’s mother was a missionary to the Indians, and money was tight.

In an autobiography Bailey wrote, he said he had to drop out of high school because of money problems.

“The beginning of the year, we had to buy two workbooks, one science and one world history. I was starting my junior year of high school, 11th grade. Those two workbooks were 80 cents apiece. I went through school when money was more scarce than hen’s teeth. So for the want of $1.60, I had to quit high school in May. The books that were supposed to be paid for by the end of the first semester still weren’t paid, and I didn’t have the money, so I just quit school, not being able to get enough credits to go into the 12th grade.”

Bailey went on with his life, marrying, fathering four children, and moving to Bureau County in 1942 and working hard as a mechanic. But that lack of a diploma always bothered him.

“My dad is a family-oriented person, and he was always so proud as each one of us kids and grandkids graduated and went on in our lives,” said daughter Nancy Carper of Buda. “He always said, ‘I wish I could have done that.’”

Her brother, Robert Bailey of Phoenix, agreed.

“I’ve heard him so many times say, ‘Well, for the lack of a $1.60 ...” he said.

Robert Bailey was at Burger King with his father earlier last week when his children came up with the idea for Friday’s ceremony.

“My brother was out here for coffee with Dad, and one of his coffee companions said, ‘You ought to try to get an honorary diploma for him,’ because my dad has always talked about not having a diploma, and it’s bothered him,” said daughter Audrey Conway of Atkinson.

So Conway got on the Internet, found a telephone number, and called the school.

“She said, ‘Well, let me check his records’ and that she’d get back with me,” Conway said. “Well, she got back that day and we were able to get this done in two days.”

“She” was Darla DePoy, administrative assistant to the superintendent at Eagle Butte School District.

“I just wanted to help the people out,” DePoy said Tuesday.

DePoy looked back through the school records, and found a record of an Emmett Bailey entering sixth grade on Sept. 3, 1928. There was no record of the $1.60 Bailey owed the school.

After speaking with the superintendent, DePoy made up an honorary graduation certificate and sent it off.

“It was real exciting,” she said. “It was something that needed to be done.”

On Friday, Bailey, who lives on Backbone Road, was picked up for his regular morning trip to Burger King, where he has breakfast with a group of friends every morning. Carper said her father has made the trip for years, and the Burger King employees were eager to help.

On Friday, when he entered the restaurant, his friends were at their regular table, but there were a lot more familiar faces present. All four of his children were there, as were several of his grandchildren, his pastor, and many friends.

Carper and Conway provided a gown and a cap, and Horwedel formally presented Bailey with his diploma.

“Can I toss the cap now?” Bailey asked while the gathered group clapped, cheered, and wiped their eyes.

While the guests ate cake — or in Bailey’s case, his usual breakfast biscuit — his children couldn’t stop smiling.

“I cannot describe the happiness I feel,” said daughter Donna Dalrymple of Princeton. “I’m so proud of him and I’m just very happy for him.”

Conway said she was honored to be able to do this for her father.

“Daddy deserves this,” she said.

Carper was moved at being able to watch her father fulfill a lifetime dream.

“He’s a proud man, and he would have liked to have had his diploma,” she said. “I think he always felt unworthy.”

Robert Bailey told of one of his father’s friends, Glen Browning, who told him the event was “the neatest thing he’d ever heard of.”

“It makes me feel good that we could get it started and make him happy because now he’s got what he couldn’t get before,” Robert Bailey said. “Even at 92 years old, it is never too late.”

Diploma or not, it didn’t make a difference to grandson Dale Cork, who called his grandfather an inspiration.

“He’s an amazing man,” he said. “He is and always will be my hero.”

And as for Emmett Bailey himself, he took it all in stride, mildly amazed that his children had been able to get him his diploma, and commenting on the wonders of modern technology.

And he was philosophical about having to wait so long to get it.

“Well, yeah, I probably learned more before I got the diploma than I would have if I would have got it at that time,” he said.

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