Remains of soldier killed in Vietnam return to Indiana after 51 years Ann (Bardach) Vollmar (LA’67) will never forget the cold January day in 1968 when an army captain from Fort Harrison knocked on the door of her family’s Westfield, Indiana, home. Her father was away in New York City for business, and her mother […]
An encounter with two members of the North Carolina state legislature put John Turner (HHS’01), a former Army officer and Iraq combat veteran, on track to fulfill the critical needs of 21st century military veterans through a program designed to facilitate community reintegration, counseling, training, and mentoring. During VFW State Legislator Day in May of […]
Veterinarian leaves career in academia to serve veterans In ways big and small, Purdue alumni shape the world every day. Across the country and around the globe, thousands of Purdue graduates make a positive impact on their communities. Timed to coincide with Purdue’s sesquicentennial, the Purdue Alumni Association is working to recognize the untold stories […]
A well-timed case of appendicitis spared John Wooden’s life. But the Boilermaker who died in his stead aboard the USS Franklin was never far from his mind. It has been more than 70 years but Nancy Wooden Muehlhausen remembers it to this day. The fear. The anxiety. The unknown. Ten-year-old girls aren’t supposed to be […]
Traveling across rocky seas — without family — from China to San Francisco’s Angel Island in 1926, Frank Chuck Toy (CE’39), then 12, began designing his future. Now 101, he credits Purdue for his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, recommendation to Pennsylvania State University, where he earned his master’s, and referrals to Boilermaker alumni who […]
It took a few years for destiny to find Sally Ann Zoll (LA’72). When it did, she recognized it immediately. In 2003, Zoll’s son, Cory Henry (A’96), a US Army reservist with an 18-month-old son of his own, was called to active duty for the Iraq invasion. It was, she remembers, “just a horrible, crazy […]
James Byler (M’08) knows, perhaps better than most, how we are defined by our roles and classified by our experiences. He knows how we become what we have done, what we have seen, and what we remember. Byler is many things: A Purdue University graduate and a New York University MBA student. A boyfriend, a […]
Uncovering the lives and awarding the heroics of Indiana’s war dead In 1992, two high school girls in Tom Clark’s (BA’82) history class tracked down the family of Corporal William Perdue, as part of a class research project into the lives of fallen soldiers. A marine, Perdue perished in Vietnam in 1968. Clark called Cpl. […]
