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Last January, my column highlighted the Vietnam-era Medal of Honor awarded to Army Staff Sgt. Glenn English Jr., who grew up at the Blair County Children's Home at Williamsburg, a facility for youngsters whose biological parents asked the county to take over their safe upbringing and welfare.
I believed that Cpl. Harry Harr of East Freedom and Claysburg was the only native of Morrisons Cove who earned our nation's highest medal for bravery in combat during WWII. I also knew that William Sitman of Bellwood was another local awarded the Medal of Honor during the Korean War. But Staff Sgt. English's heroics in Vietnam had escaped my attention.
My newspaper and internet research about English turned up dead ends. I could not find an obituary. Inquiries to lifelong residents of Williamsburg found no one who knew of his life in the Cove.
I wanted Glenn to get all the recognition he was due for overcoming boyhood and teenage adversity to achieve the most revered medal that can be awarded to an American service member. So, I appealed for any reader who knew him in the Cove to contact me.
I heard from six wonderful people with information about Glenn. One of them was Stanley Rex Metz of Williamsburg, who not only knew of Glenn and his sister Anna Mae, but had three Cove High yearbooks that confirmed Anna Mae's 1959 graduation and numerous extracurricular activities and nothing about Glenn, who apparently did not graduate. Glenn, his brother Larry and Anna Mae were fostered by the Herman and Mae Burket family of Curryville. There are reasons to believe that Glenn, Larry and Anna Mae's 1950s lives on the Burket farm in Curryville were caring and enriching. The nine after-school activities listed for Anna Mae would have required considerable parental encouragement and travel help. But, like other boys who did not finish high school, Glenn may have yearned for the early freedom that comes with a job and independence that he found in a military career.
Metz also has kept contact with the last of Glenn's four children, Dawn English Leslie of Levettown, and put us in touch.
Dawn reported that her father was first married while posted to West Germany in the 1960s and then to Dawn's mother. "I was four years old when Dad died," she recalls, "and was present at his burial at Fort Bragg, N.C., where I was presented with the American flag covering his coffin." Dawn said that her mother remembered Glenn as being a strict but fair parent.
Dawn met Glenn's father, Glenn Sr., whom she described as quiet and reserved. She learned that the mother might have had an alcohol problem that led to the father placing the children in the County Home and then with foster parents. In any event, from this challenging upbringing, Glenn developed the qualities needed for a successful Army career: courage, strength, tenacity and perseverance.
Glenn died on Sept. 7, 1970, rescuing platoon mates from a burning vehicle in Vietnam. He gave his life to save theirs so that they could continue the fight. He died a heroic U.S. Army combat infantryman, worthy of its highest honor and a model of dogged grit for his caregivers and family.
Cove historian Jim Wentz writes a monthly column for the Mirror.