ALBANY COUNTY — Tom Mullins is on a mission.

He works, as a volunteer, to get veterans the honor he feels they deserve. This can range from high school diplomas to medals — both are often awarded posthumously.

As a young man, Mullins was eager to serve in the Vietnam War. He did not seek a deferment as a college student. During the “birthday lottery” in 1969, his birthday came up as #37. “Up to #63, you were going to Vietnam. I wanted to go,” he said.

He passed the draft physical by not revealing he had a history of seizures. “I didn’t lie but I omitted it,” said Mullins. “A guy on the draft board knew about the seizures. He said, ‘You can’t go. You’d jeopardize yourself and the men you serve with.’”

Mullins speculated to The Enterprise this week of the volunteer work that now consumes him, “Maybe my penance for not going is to make sure vets who went get recognition.”

Mullins’s mother worked at the Watervliet arsenal. His father left when Mullins was 2, serving in the Army during World War II in the Panama Canal Zone. “I was left to figure out who he was,” said Mullins.

As a boy in a Catholic school during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mullins remembers the nuns instructing the children, “Pray that we’re here tomorrow.”

Mullins, who lives on Green Island, became a teacher and taught social students in Cohoes for 34 years.

His current passion was awakened six years ago when a friend was unsuccessful trying to get a diploma from Heatly School on Green Island for a deceased veteran.

Mullins recalls his friend saying, “I was treated like I wasn’t wanted there.” He asked for Mullins’s help.

Mullins talked to the superintendent, who agreed to award the diploma but he felt more was needed and wanted to set up a procedure for other veterans, he said.

He discovered that the State Education Department has a program called  Operation Recognition that awards diplomas to veterans who left high school without graduating but he says “a lot of districts have no idea.”

Through the Rev. Francis Kelley Society, Mullins said, he has worked with eight different school districts and seen 75 diplomas awarded — 54 of them in his own district of Green Island.

He is eager to help any veteran or veteran’s family who contacts him by email at jemullins51@hotmailcom or on his landline at 518-272-1749.

In addition to helping veterans get diplomas, Mullins also helps them get federal and state medals. “What a lot of people don’t know is, unless they apply for them, they don’t get them,” said Mullins of medals veterans have earned.

He also helps Purple Heart recipients — soldiers wounded or killed in action — and their families get enrolled in the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor in New Windsor, New York. Its mission is “to collect, preserve and share the stories of all Purple Heart recipients.”

“Our whole thing is to make sure veterans are remembered, not forgotten,” said Mullins.

Currently, Mullins is working with Betty Filkins of Westerlo to honor her father, Charles H. “Sonny” Peck Jr., a World War II veteran.

He will posthumously be awarded his high school diploma from Voorheesville during Westerlo’s annual Hometown Heroes celebration, to be held on Nov. 1 this year.

“He would be very humble over this recognition but we are very proud ….,” Filkins told The Enterprise. “My Dad was and will always be my hero.”

By working with Mullins and with Scott Leslie from the Albany County Veterans Service Bureau, Filkins said, she also learned of several medals and awards her father was entitled to.

“At the same time,” Filkins went on, “they found medals not only for my dad but also for my husband, Richard B. Filkins — a Vietnam veteran!”

Mullins becomes passionate about the families he helps.

Recounting what he has learned about Charles Peck, he said, “He was the oldest of nine children, growing up on a dairy farm. He was in the eighth grade when his mother was pregnant with twins.” While in Albany for a doctor’s appointment, she was struck by a car and killed.

A month later, the family’s dairy farm caught fire and his father broke his leg rescuing the cows. Charles Peck dropped out of school to help his family and then, at age 15, enlisted in the Navy.

Peck worked as an armed guard on Merchant Marine ships, Mullins said. He was one of just a few survivors when his ship transporting fuel during the Battle of the Bulge was torpedoed in the English Channel.

Peck was on another ship delivering supplies in the Arctic Ocean to the Russian Army and later on a ship in the Pacific Theater delivering oil to ships fighting the Japanese.

Mullins values the stories of the veterans he helps.

He was especially moved when, several years ago, remains from American soldiers who had died in 1950 in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War were returned to the United States.

“Four of these guys came home to our general area,” said Mullins, who worked on coordinating a service for one of them in Hague in the Adirondacks.

“Everyone discouraged me from doing this,” Mullins said, since the soldier had been gone for more than 70 years. “Nobody remembers the family. Well, that wasn't quite true. We got 200 people to come to an event up there,” he said, by working through small local newspapers.

Mullins is involved in an annual event on Green Island where the stories of veterans are researched and shared.

“It all started with a single diploma,” he said of his volunteer work, “and now we’re into presenting awards and telling the stories of these guys because these guys and even women rarely talked about their service, what they did, where they were ….

“Now, through online research we can track that division where they were and when and then tell you what they were doing. So now these families, imagine sitting there and this guy’s up there at the podium with a suit on telling you stories about your dad that he never told you — that he may not have told anyone.”

Mullins said he always ends the ceremony with the same question: If your dad was sitting in the chair next to you right now, what would you say to him?

“And the whole place goes numb,” said Mullins. “And people come up to me and say, ‘You know, I was OK until you asked that question’ …. That’s pretty profound, isn’t it?”