Veterans Day 2000
Vets will pick up their sheepskin

Elvin Fieldseth and Emil Mattila attended Annandale High School more than a half-century ago, but they didn’t graduate.
Instead of finishing their studies, they joined the United States Navy and Coast Guard and got an education in the school of hard knocks, also known as World War II.
Now nearly 60 years later, the two veterans will return to AHS this week to receive their diplomas.
They’ll be honored Friday, Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day, at 11 a.m. as some of their family and more than 600 high school students look on in the new auditorium.
Supt. Steve Niklaus will present the diplomas, and school board members will attend.
“I’m looking forward to it,” said Mattila, now 79 and living in Richfield.
“I’ve waited a long time for it. It’s way overdue.”
Fieldseth, 75, of Silver Creek said: “I thought it’d be nice to have.
“I could show my grandchildren that grandpa actually did go to school,” he laughed.
AHS principal Marcia Ziegler said the ceremony will recognize the veterans and benefit students by underlining the value of an education and of serving your country.
Fieldseth and Mattila will finally get their diplomas as the result of a State of Minnesota program.
It allows World War II vets to apply to their hometown schools through county veterans service officers or on the Internet.
World War II veterans answered their country’s call to fight battles around the world for freedom and against totalitarianism, says the state Website at www.educ.state.mn.us.
“Now in their 70s and 80s, these Americans have a lifetime of education. The awarding of high school diplomas is a way to show tangible gratitude to the World War II veterans in our communities at a time when many veterans of this war may not be with us much longer.”
Fieldseth said he was 18 when he joined the Navy in 1944 during his junior year at AHS.
He thought he’d be pulled out of school anyway, and by enlisting he got to choose the branch.
He served in the South Pacific in places like Okinawa, the Phillipines and other islands aboard a troop transport called the U.S.S Butte.
“I maintained 20 mm guns as a gunner’s mate,” he said.
But when the general alarm sounded, Fieldseth headed for the 40 mm anti-aircraft guns where as first loader it was his job to feed ammunition “as fast as you could shove it in.”
The Japanese sometimes aimed their planes at U.S. ships in “kamikaze” suicide attacks.
They always headed for the aircraft carriers, Fieldseth said, “and we got lots of shots at ’em as they went by.”
Sometimes, he said, you could see the pilot’s face.
He and other sailors stood watch at night for suicide swimmers. “They’d swim out and try and blow up the ship. They were quite common.”
The Butte took fresh troops out and brought casualties back, he said.
Fieldseth said he saw a lot of suffering. “Some of those guys were very, very bad.”
When he was discharged after two years and four months, he got involved in civilian life and let the matter of finishing school slide.
Fieldseth said he retired about four years ago after about two decades operating graders and other heavy equipment on road maintenance for Silver Creek and Maple Lake townships and the Wright County Highways Department before that.
He also sometimes drove a bus for the Annandale schools. Until her death 2 1/2 years ago, wife Mary Ann drove school buses for more than 40 years, he said.
All six of his children — Gary, Larry and Dale and Mary Kay Gildert, Sue Stelton and Joanne Fieldseth — went to school in Annandale, he said, and all 16 of his grandchildren are in Annandale schools.
Mattila said he lived on a farm near Granite Lake and joined the Coast Guard in 1942.
He had quit school “because I knew the war was coming on.”
He worked as a welder and blacksmith, spending most of his hitch at a repair station in Ketchikan, Alaska.
“I worked on a lot of different ships,” Mattila said.
The biggest was a 10,000-ton cargo ship that ran aground and had 16 feet of water in the first hold, he said.
U.S. forces were in Alaska because the Japanese were interested in the nearby Aleutian Islands.
Mattila said the Japanese had occupied Attu and Kiska, two islands in the Aleutian chain.
He was discharged in 1945, but he had to go to work.
Mattila said he attended Dunwoodie Institute in Minneapolis on and off for seven years and became a licensed pipefitter. He retired in 1982.
Mattila’s wife, Alice, died in 1988 after they’d been married 44 years.
He has three daughters and a son.
Sharon Mornou, Shiela Flanders, and Richard Mattila live in Minneapolis, and Suzanne Pederson lives in Iowa.
“I’m sorry that I never was able to complete high school,” he said, explaining why he wants the diploma, “and felt just for my own satisfaction it would be a good feeling.”