Fayetteville museum exhibit honors POWs
In time for Memorial Day, the Airborne and Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville has a new exhibit honoring prisoners of war.
Posted — UpdatedMSgt. Lawrence "Bud" Wilson doesn't need a museum exhibit, having spent two years as a POW in Korea. An Army medic, he got separated from his unit while trying to save the life of a wounded soldier.
"I was [missing in action] for over two years before my family ever found out that I was still alive," Wilson said.
Eunice LaVert's husband, Cpl. Caris LaVert, was 18 when he was captured by Chinese troops in Korea on Thanksgiving Day in 1950.
"A lot of them don't want to even think about their captivity, so they don't speak of it," she said. "This brings back the memory of a lot of things they would like to forget."
The family of Col. Vincent Fonke, who was a POW in Germany in World Wat II, donated a number of items for the museum exhibit, including a harmonic given to Fonke on his first day in prison camp. David Fonke said his father played the harmonica as German soldiers packed POWs in a boxcar headed for another prison camp.
“He picked it up, and he played," David Fonke said. "So, the mouth harp transported around that boxcar in the midst of that misery, and it brought hope.”
The Victory From Within: The American Prisoner of War Experience exhibit will be on display until Sept. 25.
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