Ohio’s POW MIA sponsored by the Norton, Ohio Kiwanis Club

It’s almost 8,800 miles from pretty much anywhere in Ohio to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam. Records show thousands of Ohioans made that trip, by way of some stateside military base or another, between 1959 and 1975, when U.S. involvement in the Southeast Asian country was at its pinnacle. Thousands of those thousands came home in caskets and even more came home wounded. More than 100 haven’t come home at all yet. They’re Ohio’s prisoners of war and soldiers who went missing in action while serving in the Vietnam War and, thanks to groups like the American Legion Riders, Rolling Thunder, Inc. and the crowds they draw, these brave Americans will never be forgotten.

It means a lot to the veterans. The Kiwanis wanted to give back to our local veterans. A Vietnam-era veteran at the event said. “Educating people out there about these MIA/POW guys that never got to come home… We don’t ever want them forgotten.”

Making a World of Difference