By KRISTI SMIT
Most people don’t receive more than one undergraduate diploma from BYU, but one senior graduating this week will get his second.
He accepted his first when he was only 4 years old.
Casey Peterson, a 23-year-old international relations major from Fillmore, remembers being pretty nervous in his specially-ordered cap and gown, which had to be hemmed to fit the smallest participant in the commencement exercises on August 19, 1977.
“I think I fell asleep during the speech,” he said, despite the appearances of Elder Boyd K. Packer and Alex Haley, author of the best-seller “Roots,” as commencement speakers.
“I was sitting next to a basketball player — he was huge,” said the now 6’5″ graduating senior.
Young Casey was at the convocation in the old JSB Auditorium to accept his father’s bachelor’s degree in animal science. His father, Robert, had been killed just five months earlier in an accident on the family’s ranch in Fillmore.
His mother, Sherry, and father had both attended commencement at BYU in 1972, and she had received her elementary education diploma not long after in the mail.
When Robert’s diploma didn’t come, he asked Animal Science Department Chair Leon Orme to check up on the reason. It turned out he was two credit hours short.
Robert and Sherry had finished an extension course through the University of Utah but hadn’t transferred the credit before the accident. But when BYU officials heard what had happened, they decided to waive the credit requirement and arrange for Casey to accept the diploma for his father.
This Friday at 1 p.m. in the Marriott Center Peterson will be receiving his own.
Peterson said he thinks his father would be very proud.
“I know he thought it was important for me to get an education. I know he loved BYU a lot,” he said.
Peterson will teach seminary part-time at Spanish Fork High School in the fall.
“I love teaching the gospel and I love teaching youth,” he said.
Phillip Boren, director of Seminary Teacher Training, said that Peterson did extremely well with his student evaluations.
In that respect, Peterson is certainly walking in his father’s footsteps. His father was also a teacher and was going to substitute teach animal science at Millard High School on the day he was killed.
“He loved to work with young people,” Sherry is quoted as saying in the Sept. 1, 1977, issue of the Daily Universe. “And we hope Casey will have the same desire to serve, especially after stepping in for daddy at commencement,” she said.
Peterson and his wife, Cammy, are expecting a son in September
