Pins honoring Korean War veterans are available during a Veteran Information and Resource Fair, at the Cranberry Township VA Outpatient Clinic on Friday. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle

Somehow, it’s been 71 years since an armistice was signed to put a halt to the Korean War.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, about 37,000 Americans were killed during the Korean War and more than 92,000 were wounded and 8,000 went missing.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that, as of 2020, there were more than 1 million living Korean War era veterans.

While not all served in the active war zones of Korea, most were trained and prepared for action. Some were conscripted to service, while many signed up to avoid the draft.

Veterans who served during the Korean War were recognized during an event at the VA Community Clinic in Cranberry Township on Friday, and Eagle staff writer Irina Bucur was on hand to hear stories from those who served.

She relayed the story of Frank Finlay, who was stationed at his military base in Dongducheon during the Korean War, and received letters from his girlfriend in bunches.

Finlay’s then-girlfriend, whom he married less than five months after returning to the United States, wrote him a letter every day while he was deployed, he said. At home, she joined the ranks of other women whose loved ones had either been conscripted or left before the official notice arrived by post.

“I didn’t have any definitive plans other than I wanted to get married,” Finlay said.

Finlay was deployed around October 1954, he said — “after the fighting had stopped” — but skirmishes were still happening.

Finlay joined veterans who served during the Korean War as they were recognized at the VA Community Clinic in Cranberry Township on Friday, July 26.

Bucur also relayed the story of Jim Keefer, a Navy veteran from West Sunbury, who spent 21 months during the Korean War on a vessel in Norfolk, Va., before being transferred to three different aircraft carriers. He was 18 — freshly graduated from Butler Senior High School — when he joined the military.

The three-year conflict is often called the forgotten war, Bucur tells us, wedged in history books between World War II and the Vietnam War. But the veterans who survived the war and live on today must not be forgotten.

We thank the veterans for sharing their stories, and we applaud the Cranberry VA for providing a space to do so.

— RJ