The 1962 class of Piqua Central High School had also felt it was a shame that his hometown had never honored him. In 1992, Cheryl Buecker and her husband Tom, who was president of the 1962 class, persuaded David Vollette, president of the Piqua Chamber of Commerce, to join their effort. In 1993 they got the town government to change the name of Piqua’s 67-acre Eisenhower Park to the Pitsenbarger Sports Complex, with a granite monument and bronze plaque, paid for in part by donations from ‘62 classmates.

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‘We had a deep desire as a community to see something happen. We knew [Pitsenbarger's] father was hurt that he didn’t get the medal,’ said Cheryl Buecker.

Tom Buecker said that in 1991 he had discussed the medal with aides of the area’s U.S. congressman, Representative John A. Boehner, but nothing much had developed from it. The Bueckers said they did not know the process or what was needed in Washington, or even if it was possible for someone to receive the Medal of Honor after so many years.

In 1996, Chivalette went to Piqua to gather material to write a monograph on Pitsenbar-ger. During his visit, high school classmates and chamber of commerce members mentioned their efforts for a Piqua memorial and the Medal of Honor, and the Bueckers discussed the process with him.

In writing his monograph, Chivalette be-came convinced Pitsenbarger deserved the medal. He researched the case until early 1998, when he turned it over to Hayes, since he was leaving for a new job with the Air Force Enlisted Heritage Hall in Alabama. Meanwhile, the Sergeants Association had been separately contacted in the spring of 1998 by Air Force pararescuer Paul Miller, who also sought help in trying to obtain the medal for Pitsenbarger. The Airmen’s Memorial Museum assembled a nomination package, with helicopter pilot Harold Salem signing the recommendation. Retired Maj. Gen. Allison C. Brooks of Sequim, Wash., who was in charge of Air Force rescue units in Vietnam in 1966, provided an endorsement, and Representative Boehner recommended approval of the medal and sent the package to Secretary Peters.

On April 7, 2001, Piqua held a community celebration of Pitsenbarger’s life and heroism, marked by the unveiling of a replica of an Ohio historical marker. There also was a fund-raising dinner for the William H. Pitsenbarger Scholarship Fund, established in 1992 by his father and his late mother, Irene. There is now talk of putting up a statue of Pitsenbarger in the town square. For his father, friends, classmates and the town of Piqua, the ceremonies helped bring what seemed to be a fitting end to an almost forgotten episode of the Vietnam War. ‘It brought closure for me, and I think for the whole town,’ said his father.

The article was written by Lacy Dean McCrary and originally published in the June 2002 issue of Vietnam Magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today!

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