A World War II Battle of the Bulge veteran finally earned his high school diploma last week at the sprightly age of 98.
Anthony Simeone of Cranston, Rhode Island, dropped out of high school at just 16 to go to work. he told ABC 6 on Thursday.
“My family needed money,” he says. “I grew up during the Great Depression, and it wasn't easy…I had to do what I had to do.”
Just two years later, in 1944, the U.S. government drafted him as one of the millions of American men sent to confront the Axis powers.
The 18-year-old infantryman spent months in the snow and cold during his 14 years on the force.th An armored division that trudged through France and Germany and fought in the infamous Battle of the Bulge. Hitler's last attempt to crush the noisy Allied forces at the gates of his homeland.
Born on July 4, 1926, Simeone eventually earned the Bronze Star for heroism under gunfire. But he didn't talk much about the war.
“I don't think he wanted to relive that experience,” said his daughter Diane. he told the Providence Journal.
He sometimes mentioned it to her husband, retired firefighter Steve Bifulco.
“Death was all around him,” Bifulco told the magazine. “Some of them [were] I'm his best friend. ”
The veteran described a particularly harrowing incident when he and other American soldiers were attempting to cross a river on two heavy metal cables. The soldiers were grinding their feet along one cable, using overhead wires for balance.
However, their glacial speed made them easy targets for German snipers, who took aim at unsuspecting troops.
“The soldier in front of me was shot dead. [and] The soldier who was behind him was shot and killed,” Bifulco said. “I saw the bullet hit the water.”
“He was having nightmares,” Diane added. “He woke up screaming and told his mother, “I thought you were back there.''
His wife of 73 years, Virginia, would try to calm him down when he had night terrors.
“I just want to say, Tony, Tony, it's okay,” Virginia, 94, told the newspaper. “It was a terrible experience for him. God bless him.”
During his European tour, Simeone always carried his house keys with him. It was like a talisman to remind myself that, if I was lucky, I would one day return home to my parents and three siblings.
“The military didn't care,” he told ABC. “But the combat part is something else.”
The eldest son of a blue-collar Italian immigrant was eventually able to return home.
He forged a new life out of the hell he had endured, earned his GED, trained at New England Institute of Technology, and worked as a machinist all his life, retiring in 1991.
He married Virginia in 1951 and they raised two children.
But something was always missing, he said. He wanted a little piece of paper that said he graduated.
“It's a great feeling because I was kind of an outcast,” Simeone said. “Everyone around me had a diploma, but I didn't.”
About 100 people gathered Thursday in the Cranston High School East Gymnasium to watch the graduation ceremony.
“Today we come together to honor Anthony Simeone, an outstanding man who exemplified a life of service, resilience, and dedication,” Tom Barbieri, the school's principal, said at the presentation.
Mr. Simeone's family helped him to the podium, where Superintendent Jeanine Nota Masse handed him the document he had coveted for years.
“I never expected to be honored like this,” he told the crowd. “I'm very honored.”
