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On graduation day, 101 years after Milton Pettit Griswold entered UW-Madison, his family will accept his engineering degree, posthumously.

The degree comes in most part thanks to the research efforts of his granddaughter. Griswold died in 1954 after years of failing to get the university to acknowledge his completed war-time degree requirements.

In 1915, Griswold was a cadet in the university’s naval science program — a naval aviator — and was studying to become a mechanical engineer. World War I intervened in his education, however. By March 1918 he had enlisted in the Navy.

He remained on active duty until April 1919, married, moved to California and became a successful petroleum engineer.

Most likely, according to an account from the Engineering Department, when Griswold returned to Wisconsin after the war, he believed the university would award him a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. The university had pledged to issue “war credits” to anyone who had served in the war and were seniors with the appropriate number of credits.