By:JOSEPH KELLARD
Although many people return to c o m p l e t e h i g h s c h o o l after an interruption, f e w get a d i p lom a the way R o n a l d K r u t did .
On June 30, Krut, 73, finally got his hands on his diploma from Oceanside High School, the same day that grandniece Katie Fitzwilliams was ceremoniously handed hers at Sayville High School. But while Fitzwilliams took the traditional route, Krut got there via a new mode of graduation, thanks to a recent amendment to New York State Education Law known as Operation Recognition.
"I always wanted a high school diploma," said K r u t , a W o r l d W a r I I v e t e r a n . "I'm happy I finally have one through this program."
Enacted in September 2000, Operation Recognition allows any veteran of the armed forces who served in World War II and who was unable, for any reason, to complete a secondary education to be awarded a high school diploma based on knowledge and experience gained while on active duty.
It was on his 17th birthday, Sept. 7, 1944, that Krut enlisted in the Navy. He cut his Oceanside High School education short so that he could be sent to Sampston Boot Camp in upstate Geneva. Soon after, he was put on the USS Catamount as a fireman on the landing deck. He went on to the South Pacific, where war was raging.
"I was all gung-ho about going into the war," said Krut, the youngest of four boys. "I was young and dumb at the time."
This past March, 57 years after he left his high school education unfinished, Krut discovered he could still obtain a diploma. While at a veterans hospital in Northport, he leafed through Veteran's News and found an item that said anyone who fought in World War II could receive their diploma from the district where they attended school, upon presentation of certain credentials, such as an Honorable Discharge certificate.
Soon after, Krut took the news to Oceanside High School and presented it to registrar Carol Hudak, who had not heard of this newly established law and researched it.
"I called the New York State Division of Veterans Affairs in Hauppauge and Assemblyman John Flanagan's office in Suffolk County and finally received a copy of the law, called Operation Recognition," Hudak said. She ordered Krut's diploma and it was in his hands just in time for his grandniece's graduation.
Instead of returning to school after coming home from war in December 1945, Krut had found a job working as a train director with the Long Island Rail Road. Starting in 1946, he married, had two boys and girls and lived on Foxhurst Road, the same street where he grew up.
"At that age and after what we went through, I couldn't do it," he said of going back to school. "The war, as far as I am concerned, affected my life and all of my family."
Although he and brothers James, Bob and Douglas, who collectively saw action in Italy, Germany and the Atlantic and Pacific, all survived the war, it took its toll on all of them both physically and psychologically.
After transferring to the now defunct New York Central Railroad in Poughkeepsie, Krut spent 13 years working with IBM in Armonk, where he began pricing parts and accessories and eventually worked his way up the ladder in the company's finance department. "I was very good with numbers," he said.
The last 17 years he worked as a traveling salesman for an electrical supply company.
"While at IBM I went as far as I could go for someone without a diploma," Krut said. "So, all these years I always wondered how far I could have gone if I had my diploma."
Today, Krut's diploma rests on his bedroom dresser, next to a card he received.
"I had so much fun with my family at my grandniece's graduation party," Krut said. "She got all the cards. But later my family got together and got me a card and put a dollar bill in it. It was great fun."
With his brothers all deceased and with World War II veterans dying nationwide at an estimated rate of 1,000 daily, Krut knows of no other person who would be eligible to receive their diploma through Operation Recognition. However, he hopes that like the newspaper item he discovered, this article will reach others who always wanted their diplomas.
"I felt guilty that I never got my diploma," Krut said. "Maybe now, others who feel like I did will not have to feel that way anymore."
