Bud Thompson dropped out of high school to join the military when the world was at war in the 1940s. After the war, he traveled the country as a singing troubadour, pairing his baritone voice with his Spanish guitar.
When he was done with music, he moved to Shaker Village in Canterbury, N.H., where he helped keep the Shaker’s legacy and culture alive by helping build a museum, and then to Warner, N.H., where he and his wife, Nancy, created the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum, celebrating a culture he had become fascinated with as a young boy.
Through it all, he couldn’t forget one thing he hadn’t seen through to the end: earning a high school diploma.
That dream was realized on Thursday during Thompson’s 97th birthday party at the Indian Museum, where he was presented with an honorary diploma from Kearsarge Regional High School.
“I’m so humbled by all the nice things people have said. I can’t tell you how much it means,” Thompson said.
Andy Bullock, the museum’s executive director and a longtime friend of Thompson, said he was helping Thompson prepare for a media interview in November when he noticed that Thompson was making an extra effort to show proof of his accomplishments, even though they weren’t in question.
“He had this immediate need to document and prove all the things he had done because, he’d say, ‘You know, I didn’t finish high school,’ ” Bullock said.
Bullock reached out to officials from Kearsarge Regional High School and SAU 65, and the school board unanimously supported the idea.
“In today’s age of schools, where we talk about extended learning opportunities for kids and learning outside the classroom, I think that Mr. Thompson is a shining example of someone who learned outside the classroom and took his knowledge and built these wonderful places he’s been a part of,” principal Rob Bennett said. “Certainly it’s worth a couple of credits.”
Thompson’s appreciation of Native American culture began in a second-grade classroom when he was a young boy in Connecticut. One day, about 90 years ago, his teacher introduced a visiting speaker, Grand Chief Sachem Silverstar.
Thompson was so moved by meeting Chief Silverstar that he wrote the chief a letter. A week after he sent the letter, Bud got one back.
“He wrote that he was proud of me and hoped someday I’d be somebody,” Thompson said. “It was a wonderful, inspirational letter.”
Several decades later, several members of the Silverstar family joined him to celebrate the opening of the museum in Warner.
“I’m touched when I think about it now,” Thompson said. “I’ve had a storybook life, and I can’t get over it.”
Donning a blue cap and tassel, just like the ones Kearsarge seniors will wear at graduation in June, Thompson smiled and gently held his diploma.
There’s nothing left to prove.