![\"Jack](\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/100-year-old-WWII-veteran-finally-receives-college-diploma-2.jpg\")
John L. \u00ab\u00a0Jack\u00a0\u00bb Milton walked into the University of Maryland Global Campus headquarters in Adelphi on April 30, 2024, believing the afternoon was a conference room and a belated nod to his hundredth birthday. A health problem had already pushed the gathering off the birthday itself. UMGC President Gregory Fowler, PhD, had a mortarboard waiting. Fowler conferred the Bachelor of Arts Milton had finished in 1966, \u00ab\u00a0with all the rights and privileges thereto and pertaining,\u00a0\u00bb and Nicole DeRamus, associate vice president for stateside military operations, helped put the diploma in his hands. Milton, who would turn 101 that August, told the university it felt wonderful and that it made up for the ceremony he missed. \u00ab\u00a0I feel like this is the finale of a long journey in education,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0I have had many ceremonies throughout my life, fortunately, but this has to be the top.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
The missed day was not a clerical error. In the mid-1960s, Pentagon duty put Milton in night classes at what was then University of Maryland University College, the campus later renamed UMGC and built for service members who cannot sit a traditional quad. \u00ab\u00a0In the evenings, the Pentagon rooms were converted into classrooms,\u00a0\u00bb he told UMGC. He finished the credits. Commencement collided with orders. \u00ab\u00a0On my way to Southeast Asia,\u00a0\u00bb he told Fox 5 DC<\/a>, \u00ab\u00a0I had many thoughts about not being there to see my fellow graduates.\u00a0\u00bb He was headed to Vietnam. The transcript was done. The walk was not. Fifty-eight years later the same institution said the sentence out loud. Fowler did not invent a degree for a birthday. He conferred one that had been sitting in a ledger since the Johnson administration.<\/p>\n