It’s too bad high school seniors missing out on Class of 2020 celebrations and graduation can’t talk to Joe Coppinger, James Yarbrough, Lewie Shaw and Charlie Hall.
The four men are “greatest generation” members who helped fight and win World War II. Navy veteran Coppinger, like Yarbrough, Shaw and Hall, sat in a classroom or played sports one day and marched, sailed or flew into danger the next.
Coppinger left St. Mary’s Boys High School in May, 1944 at the end of his junior year and joined the Navy a month later. He finished boot camp and headed for the war in the Pacific when he was 17. He didn’t turn 18 until February, 1945.
The atomic bomb spared Coppinger and a million other Americans from the surely-fatal experience of storming the Japanese mainland to end the war in the Pacific.
He graduated from high school in June, 1947 — not from St. Mary’s where they were leery about letting a grizzled veteran mingle with students who stayed stateside — but from English High School.
In 1995, Monsignor Paul Garrity handed Coppinger his St. Mary’s diploma.
Yarbrough, a 93-year-old veteran from Virginia, collected his high school diploma more than 75 years after he went from his high school hallways to a war zone.
Hall left high school in 1943 to enlist in the Marine Corps. He ran a business and helped raise a family following World War II. He never finished high school but he was the first person in line when the time finally arrived to pick up his diploma.
Shaw was awarded his diploma during a Veterans Day ceremony at Claremore High School in Oklahoma. He put on a red cap and gown over his military uniform to receive the diploma in the school’s gym.
Hall spoke for many World War II veterans when he said he never expected to hold a high school diploma in his hand.
Massachusetts’ Department of Veterans’ Services launched Operation Recognition in 1999, according to an online description, as a “small overdue gesture of our society’s gratitude for the sacrifice these individuals made in the name of freedom.”
The first recognition ceremony for veterans who donned uniforms instead of graduation gowns took place on May 20, 1999 at Gardner High School with 39 World War II veterans receiving diplomas.
Communities across Massachusetts emulated the state program and held local ceremonies to honor World War II veterans with diplomas. The recognition effort caught on nationally and Shaw, Hall and Yarbrough were among the recipients of local recognition programs.
Gov. Baker’s announcement on Tuesday closing schools until fall at the earliest dashed Massachusetts’ students’ hopes. May 4 and the possibility of returning to classes loomed on the horizon like a mirage even as coronavirus’ grim toll and all-encompassing impact on the world made resuming school a fantasy rather than reality.
It remains to be seen if graduation and the fun and farewells that round off senior year will emerge later this year or if graduation will be consigned to the rapidly-expanding virtual world we find ourselves living in.
If Coppinger, Yarbrough, Hall and Shaw could sit down with Class of 2020 members, they would share memories conjuring up the shock, fear, excitement and anger they must have felt when it dawned on them that distant wars in Europe and the vast Pacific were going to include them.
Life 80 years ago in America was different from life in 2020. People left high school to work. They grew up in big families often with three generations living under one roof. Money was scarce, clothes were home-sewn and hand-me-downs, and chores were part of a daily vocabulary that included older kids in the family caring for younger ones and someone getting assigned the task of rising before dawn and shoveling coal into the furnace to heat the house.
But everything seems forever when you’re in high school even though graduation signals a big change in the lives of most teenage Americans. The Class of 2020 deserves the same opportunity to recognize that change as the men and women who cut short high school to wage war.
