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. Perdue’s sister on the phone and said, “Your brother was really heroic, saving those three guys’ lives.” His sister was incredulous. “What are you talking about?” she said, “We were only told that he was killed in action.” Not only did the family know none of the details of Cpl. Perdue’s death, they had never received his Bronze Star for Valor. When Clark explained this to his students, the girls said that they were calling the Pentagon. “You can’t call the Pentagon,” Clark told them. “Just watch us,” they said. 

For the past 27 years, the students of Tom Clark at Lake Central High School in St. John, Indiana, have tracked down the families of Indiana’s war dead. His students have gathered hundreds of photographs, files, and records to research the stories of loved ones lost in combat. Their work is responsible for some remarkable discoveries.

On the day Clark’s students called the Pentagon, they were told to fax all their documents and notes related to Cpl. Perdue and were shocked yet again to learn that the government had failed to issue not one award to the family — but eight. Immediately, the Marine Corps had the awards made up and had them sent to the family’s residence. A Marine Corps recruiter and his captain put on their dress blues and went to the family’s house where on the porch, they presented the Bronze Star for Valor. 

Clark received a call at midnight from Cpl. Perdue’s sister. “You won’t believe this, Mr. Clark,” she said. “My mom has all this stuff laid out on the kitchen table. It’s tragic to lose your brother, to lose a son, but to find out that he saved three people’s lives? You don’t know what that has done for us.” 

Not just a number

Thousands of Indiana soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and many more in World War II. Yet, Tom Clark wants his students to know that there is a story behind each of these lost lives. “In history textbooks it says 58,142 soldiers died in Vietnam, but by doing this project, students see the face behind the name. They meet the mothers. It wasn’t just a number. It was a person.”

Tom Clark’s project started in 1986 when one of his students began a campaign to raise money for a memorial in honor of Lake Central High School graduates who died in Vietnam. Other students joined in the effort and the group ultimately discovered the names of five boys from their school who had lost their lives. They contacted the families, interviewed each one, and obtained a piece of stone left over from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They had each of the soldiers’ names engraved on it.  A ceremony was held. Representatives from each family were in attendance and the students stood up and talked at length about each soldier. At the time, Clark thought it was the highlight of his teaching career. The following year, students asked to continue researching Indiana’s war casualties and the project expanded from there. “In the beginning, our goal was to obtain a picture of a soldier and copy some of their documents — things that told a little about their lives. We wanted to memorialize them and as we did so, the families said, would you like his letters? Would you like his Purple Heart? His uniform?” 

At the start of the school year, Clark, himself a veteran of Afghanistan, gives each of his students two files that include the names of dead servicemen. He asks them to find out as much as they can about these soldiers. Students search government archives, school yearbooks, and they post messages on the Internet — whatever will lead them to families, siblings, and children of the deceased. “I tell the students that they may never find the family. But the goal is to find as much information as you can about the individual as a person.”

To date, Clark and his students have located 1,300 photos of soldiers and have interviewed close to 1,100 families. Despite their diligence, some cases go nowhere. Yet, for every file that remains unfulfilled, there is a story of a fallen soldier, a family that as been comforted and sometimes — as in the case of Cpl. Perdue, they have unearthed extraordinary stories. 

Reuniting with memories of her sweetheart 

While those who served in Vietnam often returned to ambivalent views about the war, men who served in World War II were revered. Many of them, like Corporal Homer “Binks” Gettler, were just beginning their lives. Cpl. Gettler had signed to play baseball for the Chicago White Sox and was engaged to the now Betty Kolodziej. Last fall, Clark assigned 17-year-old Marissa Emery to interview the 87-year-old Kolodziej about her former fiancée, and the two have since struck up an unlikely friendship. The high school senior even visited Cpl. Gettler’s grave in St. Avold, France, so she could go back and share the experience with Kolodziej.  Emery kept a journal during her trip and later read what it was like to stand in front of Cpl. Gettler’s grave. “We have been able to show Betty pictures and letters that we got out of Gettler’s house that she has never before seen. She is reliving those memories again.” While Kolodziej went on to marry another WWII veteran and had four children, her husband has since passed away. She told her daughter, “Binks was my first love and your father — he was my second love.” The diamond that Cpl. Gettler gave to Betty Kolodziej for their engagement has been mounted in the wedding ring she received from her husband, the ring she wears now. 

Healing families and students

Tom Clark’s history classroom is crammed with artifacts from war. There is a disabled bazooka, signs captured from Osama Bin Laden’s headquarters, uniforms from US soldiers in various conflicts, and photographs of Tom Clark standing among children at an Afghan orphanage. Locked up near the front of the room are thousands and thousands of letters written by servicemen. Students not enrolled in any of Clark’s classes sometimes stop by and ask about the things that decorate the walls and ceiling of his classroom.  “It’s been such a great experience for my students. They learn research skills and how to use the Internet, but it’s also therapy for the families.” 

Investigating the stories of fallen soldiers has also affected the lives of students. Clark can recall dozens of students who arrived in his classroom with little interest in history, or even academics, yet who have responded to the project in ways he could never have imagined. “Students are very interested in doing this project, especially when they get letters back that say how wonderful they are for doing this, for thinking of my family after all these years.”

Clark recalls a boy who sat in the back of class and seldom spoke. One day, Clark asked him to stay after school. “I told him I needed help with this project.”  After much haranguing, the boy agreed. Together they went to visit the home of Specialist Gary Edwards, a soldier who had died in Vietnam in 1967. As they stood on the doorstep of Spc. Edwards’s family in Hammond, his mother began to verbally attack them. “We aren’t here from the government,” Clark said.  “We’re here to honor your son.” The boy watched all this and he slowly began to talk to Mrs. Edwards. He was nervous, but as he began to speak the woman began to open up about her son, a man who had hoped to become a history teacher. “My student and the mother bonded. She gave us all of her son’s stuff. I couldn’t stop him after that. He went on to earn his bachelor’s, then master’s degree, and he’s currently working on a doctorate in psychology.”  

Clark admits it would be easier to simply have his students read what the textbooks say about war, but that wasn’t the model he experienced as a student. “It gives them such pride to do this work. That’s real teaching, when you make students feel better about themselves.” 

Phenomenal teachers beget phenomenal teachers

Clark honed his teaching philosophies in the late 1970s as a student at Purdue University Calumet. It was in his first class, communications with Professor Danny Dunn, that Clark, a self-described introvert, had a breakthrough. “Professor Dunn was phenomenal. He let us each of us give a speech about something that really mattered to us.” This would prove revelatory to Clark who said that soon after he began to think about life in a different way. “When I first started teaching, I wondered how I could make a connection with kids. How do you convey history?” Clark has since found a way to make history real for his students, just as his professors at Purdue Calumet made subjects come alive for Clark and his classmates. 

Clark continued to take Professor Dunn’s classes even when he no longer needed them to fulfill a requirement. In one class, they discussed the history of rhetoric and Clark wrote a paper on the Cuban Missile Crisis. “I earned an A- and he really slammed me. But I wasn’t even upset. I had such respect for him. It made me want to go back and then I learned even more.” This desire to explore all aspects of a topic has remained a focal point for the way Clark runs his classroom. “I want them to see this is a life. It’s a story. Something they can use. My main objective is to change their attitude about history.”

Honoring the dead

Through the exercise of collecting stories, Clark and his students are preserving history. By putting a face to a name, they have begun to explore our nation’s complicated relationship with war and in the process, found a way to honor soldiers and their families. In the future, Clark hopes to have a photograph and a write-up on each soldier. While the research remains compelling, he would like to display the artifacts from their efforts in a museum so that other people can learn from them. 

“I tell the students there is nothing glorious about war. What is incredible is one person giving his life to save someone else.”