Honorary diploma awarded to former student, now 102

'Oatmeal and attitude' are the keys to longevity, the centenarian says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The board of education awarded an honorary high school diploma Tuesday to a 102-year-old man who quit school at 16 to help support his family during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.
The audience stood as a recording of "Pomp and Circumstance" played, and the board awarded the diploma to Leonard McCracken, a great-great-grandfather who flew here from his Leesburg, Fla., residence for the ceremony.
Superintendent Kathryn Hellweg presented McCracken, who would have graduated in the class of 1921, with a folder that included his diploma, a 1921 commencement program and class pictures, including one showing him in the sophomore class.
Numerous members of McCracken's family attended the ceremony at the board meeting, during which the board recessed to a graduation party down the hall.
McCracken's story
"I'm overwhelmed that this would happen this way," McCracken said of the presentation. McCracken said he always regretted not being able to graduate as a young man "because I could have done many things I didn't do."
For those who have dropped out of school, he recommended they re-enroll or complete a high school equivalency course. "Today, you can hardly get a job anywhere without a diploma," he observed. "It gives you a feeling of competence that you don't have otherwise."
When asked the secret of his longevity, McCracken said tersely: "Oatmeal and attitude." McCracken is a Christian Scientist, but he also is a disciple of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, author of "The Power of Positive Thinking." Oatmeal is part of his breakfast every day.
The 1918 flu epidemic killed about 500,000 Americans and about 50 million people worldwide. "With that flu epidemic, the whole town was overwhelmed, and the deaths were happening so fast that the undertakers couldn't take care of them fast enough. The bodies were piling up like cordwood," he recalled.
Besides surviving the flu epidemic, McCracken survived the Great Depression with a $100-a-month job in a bank, where he was a bookkeeper, teller and loan department employee.
He also has been a restaurant and employment agency owner and has taught the Dale Carnegie Course on leadership and public speaking. McCracken sold aluminum and steel in Lima, Ohio, before retiring and moving to Florida 35 years ago.
McCracken, who still drives, has outlived his wife, Dorothy, to whom he was married for 75 years, and his daughter, Carolyn, who died of cancer at 69.
Isolated wetlands
On another matter, the board learned from an environmental consultant that it will need no federal permit to build a new kindergarten-through-eighth-grade building on a vacant 18-acre site on Parkman Road N.W. next to Trumbull Plaza because the wetlands there are isolated, meaning they are not connected to any other body of water.
The consultant, Sandra Doyle-Ahern, environmental division manager with EMHT engineers and surveyors of Columbus, said, however, the board must still get a state permit, and it must explore realistic construction alternatives to avoid and minimize wetland disturbance and compensate for wetland losses.
The Parkman Road wetlands are classified by the state as category 2 wetlands, meaning they are of medium quality, she said. Category 3 is the highest quality, and category 1 is the lowest.
The Parkman Road site is part of a $153 million construction project that will replace all 13 city schools with five new buildings by mid-2009.