Man to get BGHS diploma - 60 years late

Bowling Green High School graduate Richard Friess looks over the audience after receiving his diploma and joining the BGHS class of 1953 during a graduation ceremony for the class of 2013 at the Stroh Center. (Photo: Enoch Wu/Sentinel-Tribune)

Sixty years after it should have happened, Richard Friess has received his high school diploma.
Friess was the first graduate called up on stage at Bowling Green High School's commencement Friday.
"I just started thinking about it," Friess said about getting his diploma. "This started out to be a fabulous year for me. The only thing I haven't got is a high school diploma."
That wish came true Friday. PHOTO BLOG
Friess, now 80, would have been a member of the BGHS Class of 1953 - 60 years ago this summer. But as an 18-year-old sophomore, he decided to drop out in 1951 and enlist in the Air Force.
That was the time of the Korean War, but Friess wasn't shipped to that peninsula.
He started his tour in Tripoli, then spent some time in Texas, before being shipped back to Casablanca, in western Morocco, on the northwest corner of Africa.