7 Decades Later, Veteran Receives HS Diploma after Dropping Out to Serve

Photos Courtesy of Adam Ahmed, senior at Leo High School

Newspaper Clipping: Mr. Wilkins is pictured front left, near the asterisk.

If you ask 89-year-old Jim Wilkins, he never really ”needed” that high school diploma.

The Orland Park resident dropped out of Leo High School during his junior year to join the Navy. He fought in World War II and married his sweetheart Florence, raising a family of three daughters and one son during their 63 years together.

“I think my life turned out pretty great,” Wilkins said. “I’m very happy with the way things worked out for me.”

The veteran was stunned, then, by a ceremony to award him the diploma he missed out on as a teen.

“I just thought they were going to have a little memorial service, and it ended up being much, much bigger,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins was honored in a solo graduation ceremony Nov. 6, after he recognized all war veterans who came before, and went after him, by laying a wreath in front of Leo’s War Memorial.

“I felt like I had come ‘home,’” Wilkins said, of his return to the school at 7901 S. Sangamon St. “Like I was truly back where it all began.”

He carried with him a binder of news clips that opened a portal into his past.

‘My Mother Put a Stop to It’

Two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wilkins couldn’t wait any longer to serve.

Eager to enlist but not yet eligible, a 15-year-old Wilkins doctored the ’6’ in his birth year of 1926 to a ‘5’ on his birth certificate. He played hooky from school and filed into a Chicago courthouse.

“I passed the physical and everything,” Wilkins said, though one doctor pressed him about his age.

A newspaper photographer from the Herald American captured him queued up in the hallway with the others. Taken that morning, the photo was in the paper and in his parents’ hands that evening beneath the headline: ”Chicagoans Rush to Join Navy.”

Wilkins was exposed.

“Everybody knew I’d falsified the document the next day when I was in the paper,” said Wilkins. “If the letter (to report) ever came, they didn’t give it to me.

“I’m sure my mother put a stop to it.”

A year and some weeks later on his 17th birthday—Jan. 7, 1943—Wilkins followed his country into war and honored a family heritage rooted in World War I and The Civil War. He trained as a radio operator and served on a landing ship, LST-278, which carried troops and tanks into battles on the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Peleliu. He led as a senior petty officer in communications, overseeing several officers years his senior.

He was discharged in December 1946, joined the Navy reserve in 1950 and was assigned as a radio operator on board the submarine USS Catfish. He was discharged in February 1952. He returned to his Chicago neighborhood, also living in St. Sabina’s parish before moving to Orland Park 16 years ago. He went on to a 35-year career with Illinois Bell, and says “no one ever asked” to see his diploma, and he didn’t let it hinder him.

A bit of serendipity led him back to his high school.

Wilkins—Bremen VFW’s official photographer—was capturing the Color Guard during Tinley Park High School’s graduation ceremony in spring 2014. Also there with a camera was professional photographer Chuck Furlong. Furlong chatted with Wilkins and inquired about his own high school graduation. Wilkins relayed his bold tale of patriotic rebellion and an unfinished high school career.

Furlong, whose brother Rich Furlong is president emeritus of Leo’s alumni association, schemed to get Wilkins’ diploma into his hands. Furlong initially intended to keep it a surprise from Wilkins, who told Patch he ”couldn’t believe the fuss” that was made over him.

“So today, James E. Wilkins, Navy veteran, also becomes James E. Wilkins, Leo High School alumnus, 71 years later,” Furlong said during the ceremony. “Welcome Jim, we are proud of you.”