ICCC photo
The 50th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Peace Accord — which ended the Vietnam War — was last week and students from Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge are tracking down stories of dozens of locals who were killed in the conflict.
T.J. Martin, Iowa Central’s dean of distance learning, says they ultimately want to create a book about those fallen Iowans.
“The project is based around finding the 55 names of service members who died serving in Vietnam,” Martin says, “and they were from our service area of Iowa Central Community College which consists of nine counties in north-central/northwest Iowa.”
Martin and Kurt Schmid, a professor in social science at Iowa Central, are teaching a course called “Local Vietnam History.”
“We usually have a handful of students in our class,” Martin says, “and the class along with us, we do some research trying to find names of family members of these gentlemen that were killed in action while serving our country over in Vietnam.”
Martin says they’re looking for a range of background information on the early lives of these veterans.
“What are some of the fun things they used to do growing up as a kid?” Martin says. “Did they play basketball, did they grow up on a farm, did they own a 68 Mustang? What are some of the fun things they used to do, just to learn about their personality.”
The goal is to compile the biographies into a book that would preserve the memories of the men for future generations.
A list of the names for which information is still needed includes: Thomas Richard Poundstone, Jack Rae Smith, Loren Francis Studer and Richard Wehrheim, all of Clarion; Melvin Eugene Thompson of Fonda; David Allen Fleskes, Donald Henry Holm, Donald Kay Lakey, William Harrison Pease and Daryl David Shonka, all of Fort Dodge; Rickey Eugene Swaney of Grand Junction; Frederick August Holst of Knierim; Melvin Dale Miller of Newell; Robert F. Fox of Odebolt; Wayne Thomas McGuire of Peterson; Calvin William Binder II of Rembrandt; Keith Russell Heggen of Renwick; James “Jimmy” Lee Buckley, Randall Gaylord Freeman, Gerald Claude McKeen and Larry Eugene Smith, all of Sac City; Herman Smits Junior of Scranton; Thomas William Carrington of Storm Lake, and LaRoy Frederich Roth of Lake City.
(Reporting by Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)