Participants kept the items in perpetual motion for a full 24 hours at the annual vigil run, symbolizing the force’s constant consciousness and action to bring MIA/POWs home.
After the last leg of the run, Airmen retired the memorial items and conducted a wreath-laying ceremony at the Arnold House on Area A to close out National POW/MIA Recognition Day.
“Being able to carry the flag and the torch was very humbling,” said Chief Master Sgt. Jared Currie, functional manager for Air Force Materiel Command, who anchored the final shift of the vigil run along with five other chiefs.
“There’s no better way to honor somebody than to be able to carry the articles,” added Chief Master Sgt. Steven Creek, superintendent of public health at the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. Creek helped complete the run last year as a new addition to Wright-Patterson.
Chief Master Sgt. Jennifer Hellwig, retired command first sergeant of AFMC and the event’s guest speaker, told attendees about experiences that helped her internalize the sacrifices of missing and imprisoned personnel like her father, a soldier captured in Germany on D-day during World War II.
“I’d love to say my dad told lots of stories, but he didn’t,” Hellwig said. “Later, when I went to the pretend POW camp at survival school in Fairchild, I remember sitting alone in my cell and becoming very emotional because I realized this was training. It wasn’t real. And my dad had done something real.”
Once a prisoner drinking out of a tin can in Stalag 7A, Germany’s largest POW camp at the time, Hellwig’s father went on to become a Best-in-Show winner and judge at the Westminster Dog Show.
Toni Overholser represented the Miami Valley Military Affairs Association, which dedicated Wright-Patterson’s MIA/POW memorial in 1986.
Personal ties also inspired Overholser to hold MIA/POW recovery and remembrance efforts closely. While her grandfather was reclassified from missing to POW during WWII and awarded the Silver Star Medal, her uncle, once missing, paid the ultimate price in the Vietnam War.
During her grandfather’s missing status, the War Department sent Overholser’s grandmother a letter promising that “every effort is exerted continuously to clear up the status of our personnel.”
Wright-Patterson continues to seal that vow too, not only remembering but also recovering missing personnel. The base’s non-biological evidence branch of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency analyzes evidence personnel wore, sat on, flew by, fired and used on the field, working with families to identify, account for and bring home personnel once marked missing.
The DPAA recently met with families of missing personnel Sept. 7 in Dayton. Information that the DPAA gains from people who knew missing individuals best helps the agency piece the investigative puzzle together even more, in turn allowing them to give information back to the families.
The ceremony on National POW/MIA Recognition Day reminded the Wright-Patterson community of what motivates the persistent mission.
“No greater love has no man than who’s willing to lay down his life for his friends,” Chaplain (Capt.) Joshua Layfield said. “And this is why we honor, celebrate and commemorate those who have been willing to lay down their lives.”
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