A stranger raced to give Marine vet his final honor: A high school diploma

For months, Richard Remp’s friends scrambled to get him a unique gift. Remp – “Gunny” to his friends – was a 98-year-old Marine veteran whose military career started during World War II and ended after a combat tour in Vietnam. But his enlistment as a teenager cost him something that he hadn’t received since: a high school diploma.

Remp’s friends, fellow veterans in the post of the American Legion in Poolesville, Maryland, where he lived, contacted school officials in his hometown of Sharon, Pennsylvania, with a hopeful request: Could the Marine receive an honorary certificate?

Plans were made, then seemingly dashed when Remp’s health suddenly declined in early May and he was moved to hospice care. It was probably too late, Remp’s friends told Sharon City School District Superintendent Justi Glaros. She called them back a few days later.

“She’s like, ‘I’m printing his diploma now,’ ” Julien Singh, commander of the American Legion post in Poolesville, recalled in an interview with the Washington Post. “ ‘I’ll be there in 4½ hours.’ ”

On last Friday’s rainy morning, Glaros got in her car with the freshly printed Sharon High School diploma and a collection of Sharon High School-branded gear and drove 300 miles south to Poolesville to perform a graduation ceremony at Remp’s home. He was ecstatic to finally receive his diploma, surrounded by his friends and family.

Remp died two days later. Glaros had arrived there just in time.

“The really last thing that he actually enjoyed, was able to partake in, was this diploma ceremony,” Singh said.

Glaros said the gesture “felt like the right thing to do.”

“I’m just so blessed that I had the opportunity to do it,” she said.

Remp dropped out of high school to enlist in the military in 1944, when he was 17, Singh said. During World War II, Remp was assigned to a Marine Corps aviation support squadron in El Toro, California, according to his obituary. He was later assigned to a naval weapons station in Yorktown, Virginia, and a Marine Corps air station in Iwakuni, Japan, where he serviced jets during the Korean War.

Remp was awarded a Navy Commendation Medal with a combat distinguishing device for his actions during the Vietnam War, according to his military service records. He served as a crewman and door gunner on a UH-1 Huey helicopter, and the few stories Remp would tell about his time in Vietnam came from that treacherous perch: Once, he crawled out onto the skids midflight to dislodge a rocket that had misfired and was hanging from the Huey, Singh said.

Another time, Remp’s helicopter hovered over a stranded reconnaissance team. He held back enemy fighters for more than four hours with machine gun fire until the team could be rescued, according to Singh and Remp’s obituary. For his actions that day, Remp was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat Device.

Remp, lighthearted and easygoing in retirement, described those moments with a characteristic understatement, Singh said.

“We’re sitting there, just smoking cigars, and he’s like, ‘You know, it was good to help those boys,’ ” Singh said.

After leaving the Marine Corps as a gunnery sergeant, Remp worked as a meat cutter in Montgomery County. His granddaughter, Donna Remp Hopkins, remembered him not as a military man, but as a doting grandfather and an avid bowler who taught children how to bowl on weekends and spent Friday league nights at a Gaithersburg bowling alley shocking the younger players with his skill.

“Just a giving, warm, loving man,” she said.

James Cappuccilli, another Marine veteran and the second vice commander of Singh’s American Legion post, had the idea to secure that elusive high school diploma as a surprise for Remp in February. He contacted officials at Sharon High School and eventually reached Glaros, the district superintendent, who was eager to help once she learned Remp’s story.

Pennsylvania public school code allows boards to grant high school diplomas to veterans who were honorably discharged, did not graduate due to enlistment and served in either World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War, Glaros said. Remp qualified.

Singh, Cappuccilli and Glaros tossed around ideas. If Remp was up for it, he could even walk across the stage with Sharon High School’s graduates in June.

But Glaros found that Remp hadn’t attended Sharon High School, but a neighboring district. As they tried contacting the other school, Remp’s health suddenly and severely declined. Doctors discovered Remp had late-stage prostate cancer – seemingly out of the blue, as he had appeared healthy and energetic beforehand, Cappuccilli said. By mid-May, he was moved to hospice care in his home.

A heartbroken Cappuccilli broke the news to Glaros in a call last week. He assumed there was nothing more they could do.

Glaros disagreed. She hurriedly discussed the issue with her school board president, she said. Pennsylvania’s honorary diplomas can be issued regardless of where a veteran was enrolled before they served. Why couldn’t Sharon High School honor Remp?

“The next morning, I went to work and gathered what I could, grabbed the diploma, printed the diploma, and then I just decided I was going to drive it,” Glaros said.

Glaros set off on the 4½ hour drive Friday morning while Singh and Cappuccilli, stunned, quickly organized a gathering of Remp’s friends and family, some of whom were already in town to celebrate Remp’s 98th birthday a few weeks before. Cappuccilli called the local news – it felt too storybook not to share, he said.

“I’ve watched a Hallmark movie at Christmas once,” he said. “And I thought this was as nice a gesture.”

With Remp’s friends and family gathered around his bed, Remp held his diploma and Glaros declared, on behalf of the state, her school district and Sharon High School, that she was formally issuing him the honor he had never received. The event had been a surprise until around noon, shortly before Glaros arrived, and Remp was in disbelief, Singh said.

“You people just don’t know what it means to me,” Remp said, according to ABC7, which first reported on the ceremony.

Remp’s condition declined over the weekend, and he drifted in and out of sleep before he died on Sunday, Singh said. He thinks the graduation ceremony was one of Remp’s final memories. Hopkins said her grandfather used the last of his strength to celebrate.

“Everybody was there,” she said. “This was a beautiful surprise for him. I just feel like he felt like everything was completed and done.”

Glaros, who returned to Sharon on Friday evening, learned the news shortly after Remp died.

“Instantly, I bawled,” Glaros said. “I just cried. It was like finally all my emotion caught up to me, because it was like I was on a mission from the moment they had called me.”

Sharon High School will hold a moment of silence for Remp during its graduation ceremony in June, Glaros said. She said she took the steps she did to honor Remp and his storied life, and seize on a rare opportunity to give back to a veteran from her community.

“In my mind, I don’t have the opportunity to do something as amazing as they do,” Glaros said. “So, you know, this act was what I could give to Mr. Remp.”

To Singh, Cappuccilli and Hopkins, Glaros’s efforts were extraordinary.

“(A) total stranger, owes Gunny nothing, but wanted him to have this on his deathbed,” Singh said. “So he could have a high school diploma. And she drove down there, and it was above and beyond what really anybody could do. And I’m like, ‘You know, maybe there is hope for humanity.’”