You could call Betty Tawes’ missing high school diploma a casualty of World War II.
She was Betty Brighton back then, dating Bob Tawes, the man she would eventually marry. But men his age were being sent to war so quickly.
"Come Friday, you'd see them," she said. "Monday, they were in the service. That's how fast they would take them."
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So when he was called up, they feared he'd have to report to military duty right away.
"And we just had whoopee that day!" she said, laughing.
She was a senior at the nearly brand new Bellingham High School.
"So what happened that you didn't get your diploma?" she was asked.
"I got pregnant!" she said, still laughing.
"Did they throw you out of school because of it?" she was asked.
"No," she said. "We just decided if I started to show, I should just leave."
So she dropped out.
"I already was a bad girl and hurt my mother," Tawes said. "Hurt her feelings when I come and told her. I told her I was quitting school.
The same day I told her that, the people from the Army department came and told her sons had been wounded in the war."
Betty thought often of trying to right a terrible wrong.
Now, at 91, she officially became a Bellingham High School graduate, class of 2016.
But there's a debt she says she still owes to her mother.
"Saturday, we're going to go out to the cemetery," she said. "And I'm going to put flowers on my mother's grave, show her my diploma and say, 'Look Mom. I'm not as dumb as you guys thought I was.' "
What advice would she give now that she is officially a high school graduate?
"Never give up on a dream," she said. "Have a good dream and keep at it."
Cox Media Group
