Batesville area grandfather gets diploma after 55 years
BATESVILLE — Perry Pectol had every intention of going back for the half credit he was lacking in order to graduate from high school, but Uncle Sam had other ideas. Instead of a diploma, Pectol received a draft letter.
Fifty-five years later, Pectol will receive his diploma from the Batesville School Board at its regular meeting Monday night.
Pectol grew up just a quarter mile from the schoolhouse in Bethesda, which he attended for eight years before going to Batesville High School.
“We heated with firewood. The older kids brought it in for the smaller grades,” he recalled. “They closed the grade school shortly after I went to high school.”
He said Batesville was too far to walk, so he had to ride the bus or find another ride.
“When I got in the ninth grade, I played basketball,” Pectol said. “Van Reynolds was the basketball coach. After we had practice in the afternoon, I had to run from the gym on Water Street all the way down Main Street to Bailey Ford (where City Hall is now located) to catch a ride back to Bethesda with a mechanic who worked there and lived out there.”
In 10th grade, Pectol played fifth and sixth man, he said, but eventually quit the team, as he also had a job working for a Conoco service station on the corner of St. Louis and Chaney Drive in Batesville.
When his senior year ended, Pectol said, he had met all the requirements to officially graduate, except a half credit.
“I had my cap and gown and had even done the practice,” Pectol said. “Then I got drafted into the Army. … When they draft you, you’ve got to report.”
That was May 1965. Pectol said if he had not been drafted, he would have gone back to get that half credit and probably attended a vocational school to learn a trade, but instead, he went into the Army.
He recalled one young man who was drafted at the same time and went through basic training with Pectol.
“There was one boy out of Texas; he couldn’t talk real plain. You had to count off numbers in line, and he was 14. Well, he couldn’t say 14 real plain. Boy, that little corporal ran up there and got in his face — that little corporal ate the dirt! [The Texan] was a big guy. Here come the other’n. We told them he didn’t have to get in his face because he couldn’t talk plain. They didn’t do nothing to him,” Pectol said.
“I stayed in the service nine months and 27 days, then got a medical discharge,” he said.
Pectol was hit in the shoulder with a training stick during a military exercise, and the injury tore off a piece of his rotary cuff. He went to Great Lakes Naval Hospital, but the doctors refused to do surgery, saying they couldn’t guarantee he’d be able to move his arm if they did, he said.
If all that had not happened, Pectol, whose father was also an Army veteran, said he would have made a career of “being all he could be.” He said he just barely missed going to Vietnam because of his injury.
After being discharged, Pectol said, he went back to work at the same Conoco station where he’d worked in high school. After that, he had a stint working for a sand and gravel company before he got a job driving a truck and hauling freight.
He also worked 27 years for Kallsnick Inc., hauling milk, and had another job cutting steel.
“I went out of state cutting steel, up on the Mississippi River, near Steele, Missouri, a little place called Cottonwood Point. I cut up an old World War II tugboat that ran the Panama Canal,” Pectol said. “I rounded up some boys that were good friends of mine, and we took a travel trailer up there, and we cut on that sucker till the river ran us out.”
That was just a couple years ago, and after the price of steel dropped, Pectol went to work for the Independence County Recycling Center.
“I’ve got one of the best bosses now, Eric Hedge,” Pectol said. “This is what he told me: ‘I don’t want the judge’s phone ringing [with people] saying you ain’t making your stops, and I don’t want any customers calling.’ And you know what? That’s never happened.
“I figure I could have had some higher-paying jobs, but all I’ve ever been used to is hard work.”
Then, it was about a year or so ago that Pectol said he read a newspaper article about two men who’d been drafted before they could graduate from high school but were able to receive their diplomas years later.
The grandfather of 11 said he had never thought about asking for his diploma but hoped he could receive his as well, so he reached out to Batesville Superintendent Michael Hester, who agreed to see what he could find out.
While picking up the recycling at the District Administration Office on Water Street, Pectol approached Hester and explained how he’d entered the Army before he was able to earn his diploma. Pectol said he’d seen other veterans receive their diplomas years after their would-be graduations and wondered if Batesville could do the same.
Hester said he then went to the high school and did some research.
“We were then able to make it happen,” Hester said.
“[Hester] called me and said, ‘Perry, we went back and did some research on your school activities and everything, and you even made All-District on the junior ball team,’” Pectol said. “I said, ‘Yes, sir, I did.’ He said, ‘Due to all the things we could come up with, and with the academics you had in school, really, you should have graduated with the class.’”
Hester said he wanted to present Pectol with a diploma at the December school board meeting, set for 5:30 p.m. Monday at the District Administration Office. Pectol said he hopes to have his family, including his wife of 42 years, Pat, in attendance.
“That’s 55 years before I got my diploma,” Pectol said.
“He’s wanted his diploma for a long time but never thought he’d see it,” said Pectol’s daughter, Tonya Gibson, who works at Batesville High School in dietary services. “He came back from the service and had a family to take care of, and there was no time for [earning that diploma].