Tuesday, November 11, 2008
A hero's due rest
Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
At his home in Northwest Roanoke, Donald Peery holds a photo of his cousin Cornelius Charlton, who earned a Medal of Honor in Korea.
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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U.S. Army Sgt. Cornelius Charlton is an American hero.
An Army barracks complex in South Korea is named for him, along with a bridge on Interstate 77 in West Virginia, a park in Bronx, N.Y., and a U.S. Navy cargo ship.
He is the recipient of the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor, America's highest military award.
Wednesday, 57 years after Charlton led three charges up a hill in Korea and ultimately sacrificed his life for his country, he will get the final tribute due him:
He will be reburied in Arlington National Cemetery.
Charlton's cousins, Donald and Lewis Peery of Roanoke, will join more than 200 other relatives and family friends who will travel to Arlington for the long-awaited interment.
"It's been such a long struggle for him to reach this final resting place," said 71-year-old Donald Peery, a retired community college professor. "His contributions were so remarkable. I think about how focused and how valiant he was. The fact that he refused treatment and kept charging, that's remarkable."
Today, the nation pauses to honor people such as Charlton who have served in the nation's armed forces, the men and women who are the gatekeepers of America's freedoms.
Some 23.6 million veterans live and work among us, including 1.8 million women and 9.3 million people over 65.
Since 2000, the U.S. Senate has passed a resolution designating the week of Veterans Day as National Veterans Awareness Week to help schoolchildren better understand and appreciate the contributions of veterans.
Americans owe veterans a continual debt of gratitude. We enjoy our freedoms because of the sacrifices of people such as Cornelius Charlton.
Many local ties
Though Charlton never lived in Virginia, he has plenty of local ties. His father, Van, was from Franklin County, and his mother, Clara, from Tazewell County, Peery said.
Charlton was born in 1929 in the West Virginia coal-mining town of East Gulf, about 40 miles from the Peerys, who grew up in Pearisburg.
Charlton's grandfather and Peery's maternal grandmother were siblings, Peery said. But he and his brother didn't know their cousin. Because Charlton was one of 17 children, he and his brothers and sisters stayed home when their parents visited the Peerys.
"We never, ever saw the children," Peery said. "Cornelius was one of the younger ones."
The Charltons moved to the Bronx in 1944. Cornelius graduated from high school in 1946 and enlisted in the Army.
Peery, whose family moved to Roanoke in 1956, has done fairly extensive research on his cousin.
Initially, he said, Charlton was serving in Germany but asked to be transferred to a combat unit.
According to a published excerpt of a letter Charlton wrote to one of his sisters in October 1950, he said, "At last I am getting what I have been waiting for."
He signed the letter, "Love your bro, Cornelius."
Charlton was assigned to the 24th Infantry Regiment, one of the Buffalo Soldier regiments, and the last all-black unit. He was 21 years old.
Act of valor
On June 2, 1951, Charlton took command when the platoon leader was wounded in an attack on a hill near Chipo-ri village near Seoul. He killed six enemy soldiers.
He continued up the hill until the unit suffered heavy casualties and became pinned down. Charlton regrouped the men and led them forward before they were again forced back by a shower of grenades.
Despite a chest wound from shrapnel, Charlton refused treatment and reached the hill's crest and spotted the enemy position. He was hit by another grenade. Before he died, he raked the enemy position, eliminating it.
It was that act of valor that earned him the Medal of Honor, a distinction bestowed on only 132 soldiers who served in the Korean War.
He was buried first at Bryant's Memorial Cemetery in Pocahontas, Va., a privately owned cemetery that served black families of the region.
After it became overgrown and fell into disrepair, Charlton was re-interred in 1990 at an American Legion cemetery in Beckley, W.V.
Lewis Peery, now 87, attended that graveside ceremony.
This summer, Charlton's niece, Zenobia Penn of New London, Ct., began working to have her uncle buried at Arlington.
The job proved fairly simple. She sent in documentation of his military record and it was approved within days, she said.
Ugly stories persist
There are a few theories as to why Charlton was not buried in Arlington National Cemetery in the first place.
Family lore has that white supremacists with no connection to the Arlington cemetery vowed to block the entry to it. The Charltons, fearing vandalism or worse, quietly took the remains to Bryant Memorial.
That story has been recounted in publications such as the San Diego Tribune.
Penn, 57, said she does not blame the Arlington cemetery, and she does not think cemetery officials tried to bar her uncle because of his race.
Bob Gumbs, a New York veteran involved in restoring Charlton Garden in the Bronx, said he has read media reports that military error or oversight may have played a role.
Arlington National Cemetery officials insist that Charlton was never barred.
"African-Americans were buried here at the very beginning," noted John Metzler, superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery. The cemetery has graves of black soldiers dating to 1864, when the site opened.
It's likely we will never fully know the reasons Charlton's remains weren't interred in Arlington long before now.
The important thing is that beginning Wednesday, Sgt. Cornelius Charlton will be where he deserves to be.
Shanna Flowers' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
