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GREENSBORO — Eugene McMurray Jr. was in the 11th grade when his mother fell ill, so he didn’t have much choice.

With several younger brothers and sisters at home, the family needed him to start working. So he dropped out of Dudley High School and took a job at the Pomona Terra Cotta Co. to make sewer pipes.

That was more than 60 years ago.

He wasn’t able to go back to school, but his love of education led him to work two, and sometimes three, jobs to put all his children through college.

But he never got that high school diploma.

Until Saturday.

With four generations of family filling the house on Swift Street, McMurray’s children surprised him with an official honorary degree from Dudley High School.

He deserved it, they said, for working so hard for them and for being the kind of man he is.

“He made a way for us to go to school,” said Chris Shelton, one of his daughters. “What a success.”

McMurray, 81, gently held the new diploma in his hands as the rest of the family watched.

“God bless you,” he said. “I appreciate everything y’all have done for me. I love all of y’all. God in heaven knows I do.”

The process for getting the diploma started last year, but the roots go back further than that.

“He always said to me that he regretted not graduating,” Shelton said. “He always said to us, 'stay in school.’ ”

McMurray recently made a comment, during a speech by a Dudley alumnus, that the man was in the class he “should have graduated from,” Shelton said.

At that point, the family decided it needed to do something. So Shelton wrote Guilford County Schools a letter, explaining why McMurray had left school and asking that he be considered for an honorary degree. Then the family waited.

“I really didn’t think anything was going to come of it,” Shelton said. “When I got the call, I really couldn’t believe it.”

Finally, the diploma came in the mail. Then came the tricky part: gathering relatives from as far as Knoxville, Tenn., while keeping the secret from McMurray and his wife, Pearl.

At last, the day came. McMurray’s granddaughter took him and Pearl out to watch the new Tyler Perry movie, “Madea Goes to Jail.” Everyone else gathered at the house.

In the front room, his brothers gathered around the stove, watching gospel music on the TV. In the kitchen, his daughters busied themselves, setting out a huge meal with chicken, ham, rolls, green beans, macaroni and cheese and more.

Everyone got excited as he came up the front steps. They turned the TV off.

His son-in-law, the Rev. Eric Leake, read aloud in his best preachers’s voice.

“This certifies that Eugene McMurray Jr. has satisfactorily completed a course of study prescribed for graduation by the State Board of Education and the Guilford County School board and is therefore awarded this Honorary Diploma.”

And so the Class of 1949 had its newest member.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com