Patrick McNamee was a few hours from sitting down to an early Thanksgiving Dinner on Wednesday at his home in Huntington Beach when he received one heck of a holiday gift.

McNamee, 79, learned that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner had granted him clemency for a 1954 reckless homicide conviction after a joyride gone tragically wrong.

A 17-year-old senior in high school at the time, McNamee, who would later fly more than 1,700 missions in Vietnam, crashed his mother’s car, killing his best friend. He pleaded guilty and was given a year of probation, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

It was a conviction that haunted McNamee through the years.

“I didn’t want to die being a felon,” he said Wednesday.

More than two years ago, McNamee was denied in an attempt to buy a firearm in Texas or to have a concealed carry firearms permit in California because of the conviction.

“I said, ‘That was 62 years ago. Since then I’ve carried every kind of gun in the Marines and Air Force,’” he said.

So McNamee filed an appeal in Illinois. After getting no response for two years, he said, “I thought, ‘Well, that’s never going to happen.’”

McNamee is one of eight people whose petitions Rauner granted Wednesday.

“I was very excited,” McNamee said of learning the news. “It brought me almost to tears.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Jean McNamee, his wife of 58 years. “He deserved it. It’s been a long time.”

Now a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, Patrick McNamee said he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1957 because “they were the only ones who would take me.”

In fact, his wife’s father wrote a letter in support of McNamee being accepted into the Marines.

Illinois Prisoner Review Board spokesman Jason Sweat told The Associated Press that the prosecutor and judge in McNamee’s criminal case also wrote letters on his behalf, saying he’d make a good pilot.

McNamee would go on to join the Air Force and later earned more than 75 air medals.

Throughout his professional career as a pilot, McNamee said, he always put down that he was a convicted felon.

McNamee said that before his attempt to buy a gun, the only time it appeared the conviction would affect him was many years ago when he had to file for top secret clearance to transport arms on C-130s.

“I got called into the FBI,” McNamee said.

He wasn’t asked about the driving conviction; instead, he was questioned about a ticket he had received for riding double on a bicycle in Lombard, Ill.

The Associated Press and Chicago Sun-Times contributed to this report.