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.
In 1967, there was a “unit” of approximately 300 Americans fighting the Vietnam War from within a Hanoi prison. The unit—later named the 4th Allied POW Wing—was located in the drab North Vietnamese capital. Within this unit, every man had the same job: prisoner of war. All—except three enlisted airmen—were
Summer may be gone for a while, but the glorious, crisp mid-autumn weather that we so often experience in Iowa was in full bloom as we met at the Wakonda Club at noon for our weekly meeting. President Don Flannery welcomed us and called on Rob Hedgepeth for words of
Edward Martin wound up in the hands of the North Vietnamese much the way Sen. John McCain and Vice Adm. James Stockdale did — the Navy commander’s A-4 Skyhawk was hit by enemy fire during a bombing mission and downed just southeast of Hanoi. And like McCain and Stockdale, his