"Former POW honored
Area man recalls horror in N. Korea
By Lauren Stanforth Staff writer
(December 23, 2003) ‹ Raymond Goodburlet of Livonia, Livingston County, was a prisoner of war in North Korea from 1951 to 1953.
During that time, he was kept in solitary confinement, in a cage, for almost a year.
To keep his sanity, Goodburlet, now 72, would count the alphabet backward and forward, and individually move his toes one at a time.
³The only recreation I would get is some guy beating the hell out of me,² said Goodburlet, who served in the U.S. Army from 1948 to 1953.
Goodburlet, a retired Eastman Kodak Co. film cutter, received a Bronze Star a year after his captors released him in 1954. But he had to wait until 2003 to receive the Purple Heart.
Goodburlet received the Purple Heart in a ceremony at the Rochester Vets Center on Monday. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, pinned the medal on Goodburlet¹s shirt.
³I commend his courage during dire circumstances,² Slaughter said.
The Bronze Star is awarded to an Army veteran for acts of heroism during conflict with the enemy. A Purple Heart is awarded to any service person for being wounded during conflict.
Vets Center team leader Roger Hinds said a Purple Heart requires documentation by a physician, or testimony of two witnesses, about the injury.
Goodburlet said it was difficult for him to be awarded the Purple Heart because the documents that detailed his injuries suffered in the POW camp were lost. But lobbying by Rochester-area veterans organizations finally made it a reality. POWs have received less resistance for such accommodations since the early 1980s, Hinds said.
Henrietta resident Peter D. Leonard also was recognized at the Vets Center ceremony for receiving a Purple Heart.
Leonard, a Marine, was hit by shrapnel from cannon fire in Vietnam in 1968. He was treated at a field hospital and received stitches in his hand, chin and leg.
A few days after the injury, Leonard couldn¹t get back to the field hospital to have his stitches removed. So he took them out himself with a nail clipper and the small, aluminum mirror soldiers used for shaving.
After returning from Vietnam in 1968, Leonard served as a reservist. His total service in the Marines was 43 years.
³I felt proud,² said Leonard, also a former Eastman-Kodak Co. employee, who received the actual Purple Heart medal in the mail Saturday. ³I called my daughters and told my granddaughters.²
LSTANFOR@DemocratandChronicle.com
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