Ames, Iowa — In a solemn Veteran’s Day ceremony attended by rows of fresh-faced, uniformed ROTC cadets, Iowa State University yesterday marked the addition of four names to the walls of the Memorial Union’s Gold Star Hall, where the university remembers former students killed in action while serving in the armed forces.
The four students—one each from the First and Second World Wars and the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam—were warmly recalled despite the passing of the decades, with family members’ childhood memories recounted alongside those of college classmates and Army and Air Force pals. Relatives of several of the students attended the ceremony, held in the Great Hall of the 1928 union building. The Gold Star Hall is just inside the building’s original main entrance.
Three of the four names had been inscribed earlier, but not marked with ceremonies, while the fourth is a new addition. Besides honoring deaths in recent conflicts—one former student was killed in Somalia, while the deaths of three others are listed under the heading “Global War on Terrorism"—the university has occasionally added previously-overlooked names of those killed long ago. Three of those remembered in yesterday’s ceremony were initially listed as missing in action—in one case until 1978—which may account for the delay in including them.
The four former students honored yesterday were:
John Hubert Woodward, of Hamburg, Iowa, who attended a one-year dairy program at the university in 1911 and 1912. He was drafted in World War I and was killed in France in 1918. His mother wrote to the first director of the Memorial Union in 1929, seeking her son’s inclusion in the Gold Star Hall, but the request was not acted upon until this year.
Russell Manning Vifquain Jr., of Ames, who attended from 1936 to 1940 and was the son of an agronomy professor at the university. He was killed in 1945 when the B-29 Superfortress on which he served as navigator developed engine trouble and went down near Iwo Jima in the North Pacific.
Charles Thomas Hopper, of Sioux City, Iowa, who attended from 1947 to 1951. He was killed during a Chinese offensive in South Korea in 1953.
Delbert Ray Peterson, of Manson, Iowa, who attended from 1957 to 1962. He died in South Vietnam in 1966 after the AC47 of which he was co-pilot was shot down while trying to support a besieged base.
The entrance to the Gold Star Hall.
One of the World War I walls, with Woodward’s name added.
The main World War II wall.
One of the hall’s six stained-glass windows. (Former students’ photos courtesy of Iowa State University.)