Coeur d'Alene 84-year-old looks forward to finally graduating from college

COEUR d'ALENE — Unfinished business remains unfinished for many people.

Not for Richard Gauntlett.

He recently went back to school to major in history after illness forced him to leave college early. He has an A in one class and a B+ in the other. As a freshman who recently re-enrolled at Oregon State University, he is on academic probation for the not-so-great GPA that was on his record when he left. He's optimistic, though, that the probation will soon be lifted.

Gauntlett and his family believe it's never too late to finish something you started — even if that something was started more than six decades ago.

"It’s been troubling me in the back of my brain for years, ‘Why haven’t I done it?’” Gauntlett, 84, said Jan. 20 while sitting in the sunlight that beamed through a window of the Coeur d'Alene home he shares with Trudy, his wife of almost 57 years. The light especially illuminated the orange of his Oregon State T-shirt, something he is more than proud to wear.

“It’s finishing something I wanted to do 64 years ago, and life got in the way," Gauntlett said. "Even though I’ve gone to different colleges for training for different jobs, I didn’t finish this one."

Gauntlett was always one of the youngest in his class. His mom started him in kindergarten early when they lived in east Tennessee during World War II. When they moved to Oregon, he also got a head start on his secondary schooling. 

"I entered high school as a freshman at the ripe old age of 13,” Gauntlett said. “I graduated in 1957 just barely by two months 17. We graduated in May and my birthday was in March.” 

Gauntlett, who craves knowledge and learning opportunities, even went back to high school before he turned 18 so he could academically buff up before going to university on a limited baseball scholarship to play as a left-handed pitcher.

“It was $500 a year," he said. "In those days, that was probably not that bad.”

Gauntlett was early in his college career when he became severely ill with mononucleosis and influenza. His time was cut short; he had to drop out because of all the school he would miss. He intended to go back the next fall.

“I didn’t want to, but I felt like a dishrag," Gauntlett said. "I was just done.”

As he recovered, the bright, inquisitive youngster put aside his academic ambitions to help out his parents. He gave them the money he had in the bank and went back to work, but soon his health relapsed.

"I was right back to where I started," he said.

Without the ability to work, his account still empty and lacking a true sense of purpose, he began talking to military recruiters. Gauntlett had been in ROTC in high school and still had a yearning to serve. He enlisted in the Air Force in July 1959.

“I felt very positive about it,” Gauntlett said. “It would be a new challenge, but I felt it was something I wanted to do.” 

Gauntlett served as an airplane mechanic in Vietnam. His desire to finish school was still prominent. He began taking correspondence courses.

“It was the old, you might say, ‘snail mail’ way,” Gauntlett said. “You got the information, you did a test, you sent it back in the mail, they graded it, sent corrections back to you.” 

However, he just couldn't keep up because of his military duties and the ongoing war.

“I had to withdraw,” he said.

Gauntlett went on to do many great things. His early interest in flying and airplanes blossomed into commercial airplane mechanic work. He moved to Sacramento to work as a service adviser and used car service manager at a dealership. He and Trudy leased a fixed-base operator where they ran a full-service facility and restaurant. Gauntlett negotiated deals in the aircraft industry.

Eventually, that period ended, and he joined the California Air National Guard, where worked until he retired as a senior master sergeant and first sergeant. He, Trudy and their daughter, Vesta Hager, discovered North Idaho and it became their home in 2005.

What didn't change was his desire to go back to school, of which his family was well aware.

"Last year, I came to him and said, ‘Dad, it’s been on my heart that you need to go finish school,'" Hager said. "He started crying and he said, ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing.’ Now we’re just trying to make it happen.”

During his first college go, Gauntlett remembers listening to lectures and taking midterms and finals. It wasn't required to interact with other students.

Online school is a whole new ballgame. With help from his daughter and granddaughters, the grandpa who has lived through 16 presidents is on his way to a bachelor's degree.

He is expecting to graduate in 2027, at the same time as one of his granddaughters who will graduate from a Montana school.

And he will finally be off academic probation.

“Not only does he want to go back to Corvallis and walk and invite people, but my niece, his youngest granddaughter, will get to see him walk," Hager said. "She’ll be 9 or so, and she'll have that memory of her grandfather doing this. That’s what makes me so proud of him."

    Richard Gauntlett beams Jan. 20 as he shows off his high school graduation photo.

    Richard Gauntlett's high school graduation photo, 1957. At age 84, the Vietnam-era Air Force veteran is taking online classes to finally obtain his bachelor's degree from Oregon State University.
  

    Richard Gauntlett is seen at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, in 1960. The veteran, now 84, is going back to school to earn his college degree more than six decades after he had to drop out because of illness.