By Kristina Dufresne
Paris, Tenn.–The John Babb Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution hosted a special program in honor of veterans Friday afternoon, November 15th at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Paris.
Speaker was Cindy Stonebreaker, Assistant Director of Programs/Gold Star Family Liaison for the Hershel “Woody” Williams Medal of Honor Foundation. She sits on the Board of Directors for the National League of POW/MIA Families, in Washington D.C., where she also serves as the Board Secretary and Kentucky State Coordinator.
She is the daughter of Lt. Col. Kenneth Stonebreaker, who went missing-in-action from a reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam on October 28, 1968. Cindy went on an official League Delegation trip to Southeast Asia where she met with government officials and spent time on a Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) excavation site in the jungles of rural Laos.
This site was only 15 miles from her father’s crash site. The people of the two villages on top of the mountain where the excavation site was located worked together with U.S. personnel sifting through dirt and detritus to be sent off to the archeological labs to be evaluated.
Some of the items recovered from this endeavor were parts of a helmet, the locking mechanism of a parachute, and a chinstrap. Stonebreaker has spent the last seven years working towards finding out what happened to her father and why he never made it home. Hers is a recovery mission and she is helping others to get closure as well.
She said they build Gold Star Memorials all over the United States for families who have lost loved ones in military service. The 60th monument was dedicated on Monday, November 18th in Biloxi, Mississippi. She said the memorials tend to bring people together to remind them that their loved ones have not been forgotten.
Photo by Kristina Dufresne.
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