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Herald's news reaches wide audience
When Henry Buchanan was 17, he made the decision that supporting his country's effort to win World War II was more important than securing his high school diploma in Webster.
He spent the last two years of the global conflict in the Merchant Marine, ferrying cargo, equipment and troops to the Phillipines, home to some of the war's bloodiest fighting.
"We transported all the equipment and the soldiers," Buchanan said Monday night from his home in Sedro Woolley, Wash. "We hauled trucks, jeeps, tankers, ammunition, landing craft, machinery parts ... everything the troops needed to fight."
Describing his service as "interesting all the way," Buchanan said he and other Merchant Marine sailors were initially not considered part of the military.
"Later that changed, and we got the G.I. Bill of Rights like the other veterans," Buchanan said.
But he still didn't have a high school diploma.
That's why Buchanan was interested in a recent initiative by North Carolina's Department of Public Instruction to identify WWII veterans and award them the accolades they deserve for their heroic efforts six decades ago. DPI officials this past summer authorized school districts across the state to certify those who left school early to fight in World War II as high school graduates.
Buchanan called Frankie Harris at Jackson County Schools to request an application so he could finally obtain his high school diploma, and he hand-delivered his paperwork to her last month.
How did Buchanan find out about the planned awarding of high school diplomas to World War II veterans like himself?
He read about it in The Sylva Herald, that's how.
"I saw it in your paper," he said when I called him Tuesday night. "We still subscribe – it's a pretty nice paper."
Buchanan still has family here, but he said it's not likely he'll attend the school system's planned Veterans Day graduation ceremony.
"My daughters wanted me to go and pick my diploma up in person, but I guess my brother will get it for me," Buchanan said, adding that he and his wife spent some three weeks here in September.
"We were there during Hurricane Frances, but we left the day before Ivan came through," he said.
By Tuesday morning, Buchanan had changed his mind. He called Frankie Harris at the local school system's Central Office and told her he would be present and accounted for at next week's ceremony. Not only that, Buchanan's brother Lloyd called and said he thought he qualified too, Frankie said. If that's the case, and if all the forms can be completed in time, Lloyd Buchanan will join his brother Henry on stage.
Henry Buchanan has made his home in Washington state since shortly after he got out of the service in 1947, he said.
"I was back there for a little while, but there was no work," he said. "I came out here and I found work and I found a wife. I've been here ever since."
The wife Buchanan found in Sedro Woolley was a girl from Ochre Hill, though the two had never met until he traveled west.
"She (the former Louise Blanton, daughter of the late Albert and Rachel Blanton) had moved out there with her family," Buchanan said. Meeting Louise kept him in Sedro Woolley, he said.
Buchanan had headed to the Pacific Northwest with a local couple, Bill Bumgarner and his wife, who was Louise's older sister.
"They wanted to go out to the state of Washington to be with her family, and I had a car," Buchanan said. "My brother Lloyd was in Myrtle Creek, Ore., and I was going on to see him after I took them to Sedro Woolley."
When he got to Sedro Woolley, though, he met Louise.
"I just stayed here," he said, adding that it was several months before he made it on to Oregon to visit his brother.
Buchanan first found work in Washington's booming timber industry but spent most of his working years in construction, laying industrial piping for oil refineries, water mains, sewer lines and natural gas. Skagit County, Wash., was home to many immigrants from Jackson County when he settled there in the late 1940s, he said.
"There used to be a lot more (people from this area), but the older generation is dying off," he said. "It used to be when that when you'd read the obituaries in the paper out here almost every other one was originally from Jackson County."
Buchanan, the son of the late W.A. and Mary Alice Green Buchanan, attended school at Webster through the 10th grade. Two of his brothers (Lloyd and Olin) and a sister (Erma Jones) live in Savannah community, and a third brother (Jim) lives in Byson City.
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