OKLAHOMA CITY – Riveting stories of sacrifice, valor, heroism and community service fill the online pages of the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame.
Among the 235 individuals and eight units and organizations inducted in the OMFH since 1999, men and women of southwest Oklahoma are well represented. They were infantrymen, gunners, aviators, seamen and nurses. Not all lived to tell their stories and were honored posthumously, offering the ultimate sacrifice.
Here are some samplings of the narratives from okhistory.org/historycenter/ militaryhof. Lt. Col. Jerry P. Orr U.S. Army After his military career, which spanned from 1957 to 1979, Jerry Orr was a well-known volunteer in the Lawton-Fort Sill community. He worked with the Boy Scouts Recruiting Program for more than 30 years and assisted three World War II veterans in receiving their Bronze Star Medals and Purple Hearts. He served on many boards and councils, including the Fort Sill Retiree Council, the Lawton Chamber of Commerce and Christian Family Council. In 2010, he was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the Commanding General at Fort Sill for dedicated and selfless service to the community.
Orr’s military medals and decorations include the Soldier’s Medal, two Bronze Star Medals with “V,” two Purple Hearts, three Meritorious Service Medals, eight Air Medals and Army Commendation Medal. He also received the Major General Douglas O. Dollar Distinguished Public Service Award. A conference room at Fort Sill was renamed in his honor and is referred to as the “Orr Room” instead of the “War Room.”
After graduating college in Louisiana in 1957 where he was born and raised, Orr was sent to Fort Sill for training in the field artillery officer basic course. In 1958, he was deployed to Korea and served as a platoon leader and forward observer with the 1st Battalion, 19th Field Artillery. His battalion was positioned in the DMZ, which was a fortified buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea.
“I was a forward observer on the DMZ,” Orr told Southwest Ledger in a September 2019 interview. “There had been a ceasefire, but my first night in the bunker I hear gunfire. I asked, ‘Are they shooting at us?’ They said, ‘Yes, sometimes they do that.’ ‘With real bullets?’ I asked.”
Orr laughed at the memory. “But, you know, I fell in love with the military in Korea. I was a reserve officer. It was the challenge as a leader and working with people that made me fall in love with the military. I was sworn in as a regular Army officer about three or four years later,” he said. When Orr returned to Fort Sill after his tour in Korea, he was assigned to the 1st Missile Brigade and commanded a battery.
In 1968, Orr was sent to Vietnam after completing the Advanced Field Artillery Course and served as the Battalion Operations Officer and interim Battalion Commander.
“Vietnam was a hell of an experience,” he said. “I served with the 4th Infantry Division, 2nd Battalion, 9th Artillery in the A Shau Valley. We were right on the Cambodian border.” Historical documents show that the A Shau Valley was a vital corridor for moving military supplies from the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was used as a staging area for numerous attacks.
“I was wounded twice. I got shrapnel in a leg and also shrapnel in an arm,” Orr said. “It was from Vietnam that I was awarded the Soldier’s Medal for saving a life in combat. I also received two Bronze Stars for Valor and two Purple Hearts. It was in the LZ (landing zones) and a bunker caught on fire. They were trying to destroy a cannon we had. I ran in and pulled out two guys.
“I was lucky. I don’t know -- you do things. It’s not that you’re brave -- you do things. I know that God has been with me. He has taken care of me,” Orr said. “I talked to God and said, ‘You didn’t take me. I hope I’m doing what you meant for me to do.’” Orr died in October 2021.
Staff Sgt. George G. Red Elk U.S. Army A past Commander of the Comanche Indians Veterans Association, George Red Elk was born in Lawton in 1948 and graduated from Eisenhower High School in 1966. He attended Cameron Junior College and in September 1967 he enlisted in the Army. He served in Vietnam from September 1968 to August 1969 as a Loader, Gunner and Tank Commander in Company D, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Regiment at Xuan Loc and Zion Firebases.
Red Elk was wounded in action in March 1969 and was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. He also received the Army Commendation Medal, Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal with 60-device for service in Vietnam.
He was discharged from active duty in November 1973 and then served in the Oklahoma National Guard from March 1982 to June 1991 in the 158th Field Artillery Regiment, 45th Infantry Brigade. His group was activated in November 1990 and in January 1991 was deployed to Saudi Arabia in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He was awarded his second Army Commendation Medal for service in the Persian Gulf War.
Red Elk died in April 2023.
Col. Rosemary Hogan Luciano U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army The 1930 Chattanooga High School Valedictorian was one of the first four women in the Air Force to attain the rank of Colonel. Initially, Rosemary Hogan Luciano was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps at Fort Sill in 1936 and served here until April 1940. She transferred to Fort Stotsenburg, 40 miles northwest of Manila in the Philippines.
After the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Hogan and 98 other nurses cared for wounded soldiers on Bataan and Corregidor, where on March 30, 1942, she was badly wounded during a Japanese bombing. She refused to leave her patients. In April of that year, she was ordered to Australia with 19 other nurses. During a stop on Mindanao her plane was damaged and she was captured by the Japanese and imprisoned in Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila.
As a prisoner of war for 999 days, she and her fellow nurses, many sick and injured themselves, cared for 4,000 mainly American and British civilians in the camp hospital until the end of the war. Hogan was known as one of the heroic “Angels of Bataan and Corregidor.” She was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation with two Oak Leaf Clusters, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Philippine Republic Presidential Unit Citation and the Prisoner of War Medal, among others.
After the end of WWII, she transferred to the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps. Hogan died in June 1964 and is buried in the Nurses’ Section at Arlington National Cemetery. Col. Stanley Levi Evans U.S. Army After enlisting in the Army in 1968, Evans trained as a Nike Hercules Missile crewman. He was selected for, and graduated from, the Artillery Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill in March 1970.
He completed Signal Officer Basic and Airborne Courses and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2/321st Artillery as Battalion Signal Officer. He served in Vietnam from December 1971 to November 1972, where his last assignment was Commander, Headquarters Company 39th Signal Battalion. During his 32 years of service, Evans served at duty stations in Vietnam, Germany, Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Kansas and Washington, D.C. His military awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, a Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star, a Defense Meritorious Service, a meritorious Service medal and others.
Evans retired in 2000 and enrolled in the OU College of Law, graduating with honors in 2003. He is the first African American to be appointed to a dean position at an Oklahoma law school. He is a founder of the Oklahoma Lawyers for America’s Heroes Program and has helped more than 4,000 veterans and their families with free legal services.
Cpt. Edwin Chappabitty Jr. U.S. Army Born in January 1945 at the Lawton Indian Hospital, Edwin Chappabitty Jr. graduated Lawton High School in 1963. He declined a Harvard College scholarship and attended Cameron Junior College and was a member of the Keathley Rifles and the Army ROTC Battalion staff. As an Army ROTC Distinguished Military graduate from Oklahoma State University, he accepted a Regular Army commission as a Field Artillery 2nd Lieutenant.
He entered active duty with the 101st Airborne Division in 1967, graduated Airborne School and completed FA Officer Basic in 1968. In May 1969, he was deployed to Vietnam and assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 13th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division. He was awarded two Bronze Stars and an Army Commendation Medal, each with “V” for Valor.
In 1972, he left the Army and graduated from the Colorado School of Medicine in 1980. In 1983, he was sworn into the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Serve and assigned to the hospital where he was born - the Lawton Indian Hospital. Dr. Chappabitty was a family practice physician at the Anadarko Indian Health Clinic in Lawton for 25 years, retiring in 2008. He also pursued a career as the first Medical Director of the Comanche Nation in Lawton.
Chappabitty died in June 2021.
Maj. Gen. Toney Stricklin U.S. Army A graduate of Cameron University, Stricklin was commissioned in 1970 through the Army’s Officer Candidate School program and rose to become a major general in Artillery. He eventually became the commanding general of the Army Field Artillery Center and on Fort Sill.
His combat experience was in Vietnam, where he was an artillery forward observer in the 23rd Infantry Division and later Executive Officer for his battery. He earned the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam. Other major awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal and the Legion of Merit.
Among career highlights, he also served as chief of the Nuclear Surety Assistance Team and Executive Officer to the Director of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management. After retiring from the Army, Stricklin served on Oklahoma’s board for Career and Technology Education and also on the Executive Board of the Lawton-Fort Sill Chamber of Commerce.
He has also served as president of the Southwest Oklahoma chapter of the Military Officers Association of America and played a major role in the support of Fort Sill and other military installations in the BRAC survey, involved in the closing of military bases throughout the country. Organizations Among the organizations recognized in the OMHF are the 10th Cavalry Regiment “Buffalo Soldiers,” the Oklahoma National Guard, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, the Comanche Code Talkers and the Pawnee Code Talkers.