People

John Youie Woodruff was born on July 15, 1915, in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. Woodruff competed and won gold in the 1936 Olympics. In 1941, he enlisted in the New York National Guard and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 369th Coastal Artillery Regiment. He served during World War II and the Korean War. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1957. He died on October 30, 2007, in Fountain Hills Arizona, and is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Elmer P. Gibson was a high-ranking African American Army Chaplain who served in World War II and the Korean War. He was an advocate for desegregating the military, and practiced desegregation as a chaplain, by holding integrated church services in the Aleutian Islands and other places. Later in life he served as an advisor to President Harry S. Truman and was a college president.

John Eisenhower was the second child of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, and the only one to live to adulthood. Much like his famous father, John lived a life of service to his country.

Daniel R. Smith was an Army Medic during the Korean War. During this time the Army was segregated based on racial lines. He later was a civil rights activist and marched with Dr. King in DC and on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Alabama. He died in October 2022. He was one of the last children born to an enslaved person in the United States.

Cornelius H. Charlton was born in 1929 in West Virginia. He enlisted in the Army in 1946. During the Korean War he fought in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry. The Twenty-Fourth Infantry was the last of the segregated Buffalo Soldier regiments to be integrated. He was killed during the Korean War on June 2, 1951. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on March 12, 1952. He is one of two African Americans awarded the Medal of Honor during the Korean War.

William Thompson was born in 1927. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1945. During the Korean War, he was assigned to the Twenty-Fourth Infantry. He was killed in action on August 6, 1950, defending his comrades’ retreat. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on June 21, 1951. He was the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the Korean War.

During World War II and the Korean War, “Sallie” was the codename for San Francisco when Army ships met, because Sallie K. Braun organized and managed ship movements from Fort Mason, “virtually running the Army Port of San Francisco single-handed.”