A lifetime of learning

By The Daily Progress Staff

Published: June 13, 2008

With his family literally starving, John Lawrence Locher, like so many people in the Great Depression, dropped out of high school to help feed his family. Not only was his father out of work, he also was stricken with tuberculosis.

And then, like so many of his peers, Mr. Locher went off to fight in World War II, serving in the Pacific.

In the meantime he built a 38-year career with General Motors.

He worked his way up to senior design engineer — yet never obtained his high school diploma.

But at age 90, Mr. Locher joined this week’s commencement services at Detroit Southwestern High School, marching across the stage in his cap and gown with the other graduates.

Last winter, the school had mailed an honorary diploma to Mr. Locher, who now lives in Florida, honoring him for his “life credits.”

“When I opened it up, I almost fainted,” he said. “I thought someone was playing a real cruel joke on me.”

Now, after graduating with the class of 2008, “I feel 100 percent lighter,” he said. “I appreciate this moment very much. ... It really was overwhelming.”

From the Depression, to World War II, to powerful U.S. industrialism, to retirement in Florida, Mr. Locher has lived just about every iconic phase of American life in the past century.

Life credits? We’d say so.

A real fish story

“I simply thought, ‘Here is a guy who should be honored with his own

catfish.’ ”

Wow. That might be a “simple” conclusion for Sabaj Perez, but it’s not one most of us would come up with.

Mr. Perez, who manages the fish collection at the Academy of Natural Sci-ences in Philadelphia, was speaking about Frank Gallagher.

Mr. Gallagher spent 37 years as mailroom supervisor at the museum before retiring in 2003.

He wasn’t a scientist. He wasn’t a researcher. He wasn’t an executive or an important donor.

But he was a man who loved science and loved the people he worked with — and showed it, Mr. Perez said.

So Mr. Perez thought he should be honored in a truly unique manner.

His name now graces a newly discovered South American catfish: Rhinodo-ras gallagheri.

It’s not the first time a species has been named for an unlikely person. A biologist recently named a trapdoor after musician Neil Young, and entomologists named a slime-mold beetle after President Bush.