Tribe to get Korean vet’s lost medals

WASHINGTON - More than 60 years after William Wright died on a Korean battlefield, members of the Wyandotte Nation will honor his sacrifice and receive his service medals.

A representative of U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark. - retired Lt. Col. Steve Gray - will travel to Wyandotte, Okla., today to present Wright’s service awards to Chief Billy Friend during the tribe’s annual general council and powwow.

Wright was missing in action in 1950 and was declared killed in action in 1953, the only tribal member who received that designation.

The 19-year-old soldier’s body was never recovered.

His original medals, including a Purple Heart, were stolen in the early 1950s, family members say.

They tried for decades to get replacements from the government but got nowhere.

That changed after a relative who lives in Arkansas reached out to Boozman earlier this year.

The new set of medals will be displayed in the tribe’s cultural center and museum once it is built, Friend said Thursday.

“We can’t thank Sen. Boozman enough for taking care of this,” the chief added.

The missing medals bothered Wright’s siblings for most of their lifetimes.

Wright’s brother, Loren, died in February.

Before sickness claimed him, he asked his cousin, Deryl Wright of Russellville, to track down the medals and give them to the tribe.

Deryl Wright says he tried to honor the request but got bad news when he contacted federal officials.

The U.S. government issues medals when soldiers or their next of kin request them, if they can prove that the awards have been earned. But in Wright’s case, the evidence had likely gone up in smoke.

“I went to the Veterans Administration, and they told me that my chances of getting those was slim to none, that the records in St. Louis had been burned in ’74 and that most of the records was gone. [They said] the only way that I had a chance of getting anything was going to someone to help me,” Deryl Wright, 70, said Thursday.

So Wright sought help from Boozman, and soon federal officials were searching for the documents.

They discovered that the soldier’s file, containing a list of his medals, had survived the 1970s conflagration. But just barely.

“Part of it was still readable. Burned around the edges, but it was still readable, so the military reissued those medals to Sen. Boozman’s office,” Wright said.

Gray, who handles military issues for Boozman, phoned Deryl Wright on May 29 with the good news and offered to present the medals to the dead soldier’s eldest next-of-kin, a 96-year-old sister named Velva D. Spoon, during the tribe’s annual gathering.

Deryl Wright told Gray that the presentation would be difficult to arrange. “I said, ‘Well, she is in the hospital in Joplin, Mo., got terminal cancer, got two weeks to six weeks to live, so waiting until September for our our powwow is not going to happen.”

Wright said that conversation took place “at 10:30 in the morning when I was talking to him in Lowell, Ark. [Gray] said, ‘I’ll go home, put on my uniform, and we will go present these medals to her today in the hospital,’ [and] at 2 o’clock that afternoon, we presented those medals to Velva.”

The tribe dispatched an honor guard, and one of its chiefs made the journey.

“It brought tears to everyone’s eyes. It really did,” Wright said. “You know, [Velva] said ‘I can’t believe it. It took 60 years to get closure on all of this.’”

Spoon died July 14, but other family members will congregate in the Wyandotte Nation today.

Deryl Wright said he is grateful that Boozman’s office intervened. “What they have done is phenomenal.”

Boozman said he enjoys helping Arkansans get the medals they deserve.

“I can’t decide if what they’re wishing for is right or wrong, but I can get the agencies to look at it,” he said. “The greatest joy of being a congressman or senator is using the power of the office for good, using it to help people.”

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/14/2013

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