Lawton woman still waiting for veteran husband to come home

LAWTON, Okla. (AP) - For one Lawton woman, POW/MIA Recognition Day is very personal.

Elfrieda Werdehoff was in her 20s when her husband, then Staff Sgt. Michael R. Werdehoff, was declared missing in action on April 19, 1968. They had been stationed here in 1967 before his deployment to Vietnam. He was stationed first at Pleiku, but didn’t like it, and so he got a transfer to Da Nang. He was shot at 21 times. The 22nd time was perhaps the fatal bullet. He was lost in a heavily wooded area where recovery was difficult.

With the passage of years, her husband was promoted to sergeant first class and finally master sergeant when he was listed on June 5, 1978, as killed in action. A West Virginia woman saved a clipping about him from her newspaper and wore a wristband with his name. She mailed it to Elfrieda, and they became fast friends. She came to Lawton to help organize a local memorial for him, and the two of them remain good friends today.

On POW/MIA Day in 1995, a stone went up at Fort Sill in memory of Master Sgt. Michael Werdehoff, The Lawton Constitution (https://bit.ly/1QLzL98 ) reported. He was officially declared dead in 2004, and a service for him was held that year in Arlington, Virginia. His body has yet to return home.

For Elfrieda, ceremonies like the one conducted Sept. 18 by Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Chapter 751 are a big help. She sat on a granite bench on the front row, surrounded by friends who support her, and stood when a speaker asked if anyone in the crowd is still waiting for a loved one.

VVA Chapter 751 Chaplain Thom D. Balmer, an associate professor of psychology at Cameron University, gave a progress report on the search for POW/MIAs in his remarks.

A new Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is the organization that continues to find those lost. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael S. Linnington was appointed its director in June, and it has a full-time investigator stationed in Phnom Penh, pursuing leads associated with the remaining 49 individuals still unaccounted for in Cambodia. The agency has also gone to cloud-based case management solutions to assist in finding those who need to come home.

“Lest you think our wars are over, they are not,” Balmer said. “We have recovered 74 lost souls since our event last year.”

The U.S. still has 73,515 missing or accounted for from World War II; 7,841 from the Korean War; 1,626 from the Vietnam War; 126 from the Cold War; and six unaccounted for from Iraq and other conflicts. That totals 83,114 as of Sept. 18, 2015.

Of those unaccounted for in Vietnam, 518 are soldiers, 360 are sailors, 206 are Marines, 511 are airmen and 31 are civilians.

Of those unaccounted for in Korea, 6,010 are soldiers, 908 are airmen, 278 are sailors and 649 are Marines.

Thirty-two Oklahomans are still missing in Vietnam. VVA Chapter 751 member John Coons read their names as fellow member Roger Phillips tolled a bell in their memory.

“Over 50 years ago, during the Vietnam War, it was the wife of a missing service member, a young woman named Mary Hoff, who realized that a symbol was needed to remind us of the plight of American service men and women who were missing or held captive by the enemy. She developed the idea of a flag, with a haunting image designed by a World War II pilot that would eventually become our symbol of remembrance and mission.

“It is the only flag, aside from Old Glory, that has flown above the White House. In 1989, it was installed in the Capitol rotunda as a symbol of this nation’s commitment to fully account for those that are still missing,” Balmer said.

VVA Chapter 751 President Pat Powell opened the ceremony by telling the audience, “Look to your left and look to your right. See the people next to you. You and I are looking at true heroes, one and all. Today we stand in the midst of heroes, those here in body and those who live on in spirit.”

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Information from: The Lawton Constitution, https://www.swoknews.com