Belated Congratulations

I spotted this diploma in the nearby thrift shop yesterday, but I resisted buying it because it was overpriced. Parking near the same store on another errand this afternoon, on impulse I went in and asked if they'd take less. I was surprised with a yes answer and paid a less-too-high price. The thing is large (25" x 17") and in good shape.

The Northeast Manual Training High School was built 1903=1905 in what was then the middle of a booming industrial zone at 7th & Lehigh in North Philadelphia. This was a skilled worker factory that supplied the surrounding factories, mills, and foundries with employees, including Harry Leopold Buck, Junior.

Harry received this diploma on June 24th, 1909 and remained in the neighborhood.

In 1930, Harry lived 4 blocks from the school with his wife Geneva and son Paul. Next door were his parents Henry and Helen Mays Buck, both born in Pennsylvania. Within a stone's throw there lived about a dozen undertakers. In 1940, all save Paul are under one roof on 12th Street. Paul had married an English-born woman, lived nearby, and worked as a clerk in retail foods.

The work Harry found for decades was clerk, although his WWI draft registration gives car tracer (possibly a sort of draftsman but it sounds like an errand-runner) for a downtown firm that built bridges. He married Geneva Barto in 1911 (2 years after graduating). She was a Pennsylvania gal, 2 years his junior.

He registered for the draft in both the world wars, but the only thing suggesting he ever served in the military is that in 1942 he worked at the Union League on Broad Street, which is a veterans' club. Harry was 5' 11" tall, 172 lbs, and wore glasses.

I have not spotted Harry's death, but Geneva passed away in 1980. I could find out more by visiting the library's newspaper archive, but I won't because I have no feeling that there's anything interesting to find.

I suspect that Harry Buck preserved his high school diploma because the document (printed, I think, at the school by its students) marks the most important event of his life, and because it's a proud-looking sheet.

The Northeast Manual Training High School changed its name to Edison High School in 1957. Fifty-four of it students were killed in the Vietnam War. No other high school in the US lost as many young men there.

Congratulations, Harry!