For nearly 20 years, former Army Capt. Johnnie Ray remained grateful that Oklahoma had eased his return as a Vietnam prisoner of war by granting free college tuition to his children.
But when he tried to get free tuition at his own alma mater, Oklahoma State University, for his daughter, Pammy, he was turned down.
“They told us that was only for children of prisoners of war who died in Vietnam,” Dorothy Ray said Tuesday from the family’s Wynnewood home.
Bill McMurry recently spoke to SaddleBrooke Sunrise Rotary about his experience as a POW in North Vietnam. He was captured on February 7, 1968 after helping defend the Lang Vei Special Forces surveillance camp in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam, about one and a half miles from the Laotian
Soon after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, the United States prepared for Operation Homecoming. Five hundred and ninety-one American prisoners of war returned home from Vietnam during the two-month process. Previously, during the war, 129 pows “escaped from,evaded, or were released by their captors,” including
Another group of newly freed prisoners of war came home yesterday. “There’s no way we can express our feelings and emotions as we walk once more on pills wonderful land of ours,” said Capt. Charles Gillespie of San Diego, on his arrival at March Air Force Base in California. His
Graduates from one of Lackland’s last Officer Candidate School classes, including an honorary class member and former Vietnam prisoner of war, reunited here to commemorate their 50th-year anniversary. Members of OCS Class 62-A, which graduated Sept. 22, 1961, were honored as special guests during the Sept. 23 Air Force Basic