��������

When very young, Krumwiede lived with his father in a little village about 45 miles south of Chicago. One day some local guys in a pickup truck invited the boy to ride along with them as they delivered ice for the ice boxes that kept food cold before refrigerators became commonplace in homes.

“This was in the early 1930s … I rode in the back of the truck and all around the village. They stopped by one spot and tore a light meter off a house. I was 6 years old and that’s the reason why the police were looking for me,” Krumwiede said.

He said a state police trooper in a “beautiful uniform” found him at the pool hall. Krumwiede’s father ran the pool hall and a tavern, and he let his elementary school son work in the pool hall making change.

“I was impressed to see [the trooper],” Krumwiede recalled nine decades later. “We went outside and sat on a bench and he asked me if I liked what I was doing. I said, ‘Sure.’ Well, the policeman then asked me if I liked riding on the ice truck. I said, ‘Sure, I did.’

“Then he said, ‘Well, did you see those guys who tore the meter off the house?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I saw them.’”

Krumwiede realized the trooper was looking for eyewitness confirmation of the identities of the scofflaws and he assumed a child would tell the truth. He has included the anecdote about the trooper in a memoir he is currently writing.

The boy’s unorthodox upbringing was also marked by deep loss. His mother died just 9 days after his birth and his father died just a year after the ice truck incident. Krumwiede was shuttled around for a time and then raised by an uncle. By Grade 8, he was living with his older sister and her husband and attending a country school where one elementary teacher was in charge of all eight grades.

“The teacher was young and she liked to play cops and robbers with the students,” Krumwiede said. “So, we were playing cops and robbers, and then she got word that the superintendent was coming by to check on her.” The students quickly moved back into a more academic demeanor, impressing the superintendent. But as soon as the school official left, the students and teacher returned to their game. In the course of their antics, Krumwiede locked the teacher in the bathroom.

“We had these big outdoor toilets. No flushing,” he explained. The teacher pounded on the door, demanding to be free, but Krumwiede told her that the game wasn’t over yet. When he finally unlocked the door, she immediately expelled him from school. Crushed, he refused to leave without taking his report card with him.

When Krumwiede got home, luck was with him. He learned that his brother-in-law was planning to drive to the town that was the county seat. The eighth grader grabbed his report card and went along. His goal was to stop by the superintendent’s office and explain what had happened. When he was rebuffed because he didn’t have an appointment, he dug in his heels and declared that he would wait until the superintendent would see him.

Eventually he was allowed to see the school official—and he poured out the whole story, about the cops-and-robbers game, the preparation for the superintendent’s visit and the imprisonment of the teacher. Krumwiede took his case to the superintendent because he couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to attend high school.

The superintendent instructed him to enroll in another nearby high school. “You go there, and I’ll make arrangements with that teacher there that she will pass you and you can go to high school,” he recalled the superintendent telling him.

Krumwiede later learned that the teacher he locked in the outhouse left education to join the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). It was only a few years later that Krumwiede, 17 at the time, dropped out of high school in his senior year to also join the war effort. The timing proved propitious. Two months after he enlisted in the military, WWII ended. But his short tenure qualified him for all the perks of the new GI Bill, including education benefits.

Krumwiede’s WWII service led to a career in the Air Force, where a high school skill—typing—proved the key to opening doors. It wasn’t common for men at that time to know how to type, so Krumwiede was tapped to take on one administrative job after another. He was sent to Colorado and then Texas, and it wasn’t long before he found himself on a three-year assignment with the military attaché’s office in Ankara, Turkey. He originally

thought he was headed to Oslo but the assignment was switched at the last minute when the military dismissed an officer because he was gay.

From there, Krumwiede went on to the attaché’s office in Belgrade, Yugoslavia—and another right-place-right-time moment.

It was New Year’s Eve in 1957 and Krumwiede found himself at the same party and table as Grace, who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development at the embassy.

“I had had a lot to drink by that time and I probably didn’t say ‘hi’ or something like that,” he said. But fate gave him a second chance the following Monday.

“We had a snack bar at the embassy that many of us would go to for breakfast in the morning,” he said. “Well, this secretary in the attaché’s office was telling me about Grace when Grace walked into the snack bar. She had on a white blouse with red polka dots. I looked up and told the secretary, ‘I’m going to marry that woman.’”

The prediction came true. Grace and Krumwiede have now been married 67 years.

After marrying in Yugoslavia, Krumwiede was transferred back to the states, first to Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts and then to the Pentagon. Grace was pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Maryland when she started to encourage Krumwiede to continue his education. He received a GED in lieu of a high school diploma and with additional credit for service experience, enrolled at ��������while working at the Pentagon.

In 1966, after seven years of evening courses plus six months on the university’s College Park Campus, he received a degree in commerce.

The business degree put him on a stronger career track and he was sent to take charge of a budget branch for an organization attached to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. After two years, he returned to D.C. where he retired at Bolling Air Force Base.

He then began a civilian career working for the District of Columbia as a budget analyst for two years before joining the federal government as a budget analyst with the U.S. Coast Guard.

He was chief of the budget office at Coast Guard headquarters when he retired in 1986.

He did some work in real estate afterward before fully enjoying retirement.

In looking back, he said his ��������degree made the best moments possible. That is why he wants his legacy to be associated with education.

“I suppose it’s important to me because … I didn't have supportive parents to begin with and the fact that I dropped out of high school,” Krumwiede said. “Then I met Grace and Iended up getting a degree, and I was just very thankful that [UMGC] took me as a non-traditional student. At that time, when I had applied, I did not take the normal route.

“Then one thing led to another and here I am,” he said.

He credits Grace for standing at his side for nearly seven decades. And Krumwiede says a strong religious conviction has helped him navigate life, especially the medical setbacks. He starts each morning with a psalm and prays frequently throughout the day. One of his prayers is a request that he be allowed to live long enough to complete the memoir he’s working on.

“I've been wanting to tell my story because I think it’s an interesting story and it's humorous at the same time. And I want to share my religious views too,” Krumwiede said.

“By and large, I’ve had a pretty good life.”

And it’s not over yet. In January he received a 25-year pin for serving as a tour guide at Kennedy Center, a volunteer job he still performs.