After leaving his first unit after his first deployment in the Fall of 2010, Matthew Grace moved to Fort Carson, Colorado where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. At this point, Grace was a…

Floyd Erickson was born in 1922 in Gwinn, Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, 18-miles south of Marquette. Erickson grew up in Gwinn and eventually after graduating high school in 1941, went to Detroit to work in a factory making…

Loren DeGroot was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1935. While he was still in high school, he enlisted in the Naval Reserves. After he graduated high school in 1953, he began classes as Grand Rapids Junior College and then went to the University of…

Kenneth Ziebart was born on May 23, 1928 in St. Joseph, Michigan. Ziebart’s family owned a farm and his father lost his job as a butcher during the Great Depression. He recalled hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor over the radio when a newscast…

Jill Wolfe was born in December 1975 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to a mother who worked as an art therapist and a father who worked negotiating contracts. She moved to St. Louis, Missouri when she was 3, and moved again to Troy when she was 15 where…

Lee Widjeskog was born in Bridgeton, New Jersey and grew up in that area, finishing high school in 1964. He attended Colorado State University and took ROTC training, and received his commission in the Army in 1969. He took infantry training at Fort…

Lawrence Vollink was born in the Burton Heights neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he attended local schools and graduated high school in 1965. His father was a deeply religious, poor man with only an eighth-grade education and his mother…

Miguel “Mickey” Angel Velez-Cruz was born in Puerto Rico in 1949. Velez-Cruz was raised and developed during the Cold War periods of the 1950s and 1960s. Coming from a long line of United States veterans and the desire to get out of extreme poverty,…

Orley Van Dyke was born on December 30th, 1924 in Holland, Michigan. After graduating high school in 1942, he worked in printing for the newspaper for a few months. Right when he turned 18, he enlisted in the Army. He began basic training and flash…

Susan Strum was born in Alberta, Canada, in 1951 and grew up in Michigan after her father’s work moved to the United States. Her father was a Canadian citizen working for a telephone company in Edmonton and her mother was a schoolteacher in Michigan.…

LeeRoy Stelter was born April 7th, 1948 in Coloma, Michigan where he grew up and stayed until transferring his senior year from Coloma High School to St. Joseph High School. He graduated in 1966 and immediately went to work in a factory making record…

Chuck Stark was born in 1948 in Muskegon, Michigan. He graduated from Muskegon Senior High School in 1966. He joined the Army in April 1968 and completed his basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Chuck remained at Fort Knox for his advanced…