On Memorial Day, many Durangoans will attend a ceremony or visit a cemetery to honor those who have served in the military. At least three men who have called Durango home have won the highest accolade our country can award for courage, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“I would much rather have that medal around my neck than to be president of the United States,” Harry S. Truman said upon presenting the award to 15 members of the Armed Forces in 1945.”It is the greatest honor that can come to a man.”
Gen. George Patton was a little more blunt.
“I’d sell my immortal soul for that medal,” he said.
David Frakes Day, the colorful Durango Democrat editor and publisher, won his medal after gallantry at Vicksburg, Mississippi, during the Civil War. Raymond G. “Jerry” Murphy, who graduated from Fort Lewis A&M College in 1948, was awarded his Medal of Honor in the Korean War.
And Harold Bascom “Pinky” Durham Jr., who spent a couple of years growing up in Cortez and returned to attend Fort Lewis College after graduating from high school in Tifton, Georgia, was awarded his medal after he was killed in action during the Vietnam War.
A brave 16-year-old
Day enlisted with the 57th Ohio Infantry, Company D at age 15 and was only 16 when participating in the action that earned him his Medal of Honor.
“Day seldom spoke publicly about what he had seen or experienced,” historian Duane Smith wrote in The Irrepressible David Day, perhaps realizing it would be hard for those who had not experienced it to grasp the horror.”
At Vicksburg, the key to uniting the Mississippi River under Union control, Day was one of 150 men to take on a suicide mission, so dangerous that only unmarried volunteers were to go on it, according to Ken Burns’ The Civil War. Their job was to carry logs and lumber over an area five football fields long, an area completely exposed, to build a bridge over a ditch. The bridge was to give the following troops a place to cross.
More than 85 percent of the 150 in that “forlorn charge” were shot or killed in the attempt, with so many logs dropped along the way that they could not build the bridge. The bloodbath that day, almost 3,200 dead, led Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to the decision to lay siege to the city rather than attempting another charge.
The rest of Day’s service records are a bit murky, Smith said, with only information culled from personal family papers more than 60 years later to use as a reference. After the war, having survived four bullet wounds, a saber wound to the foot and three stints as a prisoner of war, Day worked as a clerk and grocer in Missouri. The lure of riches in the booming Western mining industry brought him to Ouray, where he was the publisher of the Solid Muldoon for a decade. In 1892, he moved to Durango, where his ardent commitment to the Democratic Party was always evident in his writing. By the time of his death in 1914 at age 67, Day had made quite the name for himself.
In addition to Smith’s book, Michael David Kaplan wrote David Frakes Day: Civil War Hero and Notorious Frontier Newspaperman about the Medal of Honor winner. The Day House, a Durango landmark at the intersection of East Third Avenue, Florida Road and 15th Street, was recently restored.
Athlete-soldier
Also awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart, Pueblo native Murphy came to Southwest Colorado to attend FLC, where he lettered in football and basketball. FLC was still a junior college, so he transferred to Adams State College in Alamosa to complete his bachelor’s degree.
Then he was in the Marines and off to Korea. On Feb. 3, 1953, as a second lieutenant at age 23, he was unrelenting at Ungok Hill in Panmunjan, Korea. His citation said Murphy, wounded by shrapnel from a mortar, never ceased maneuvering his force up the hill, going back repeatedly to rescue his fellow Marines and retrieve the bodies of those who had fallen.
President Dwight Eisenhower presented Murphy, the third recipient at that time from Pueblo, with his Medal of Honor. A fourth, Drew D. Dix, earned his during the Vietnam War.
“What is it ... something in the water out there in Pueblo? All you guys turn out to be heroes,” Eisenhower said at the presentation.
Murphy was inducted into the FLC Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994. The final 23 years of his professional career were spent as director of veterans services at the Albuquerque VA Regional Office.
“He loved the veterans and would do anything he could for them,” his wife, Mary Ann Murphy, said at the time of his death in 2007 at the age of 77. “Even after he retired, he did about eight years of volunteer service, twice a week.”
After his death, the VA Hospital in Albuquerque got a new name – the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center, where many of Durango’s veterans have received care. Pueblo has also created a memorial to its heroes, which features a statue of Murphy.
‘Bravest man I ever knew’
Out of the three, Durham’s was the only Medal of Honor awarded posthumously, after he gave his life protecting his men at the Battle of Ong Thanh on Oct. 17, 1967. It was considered one of the bloodiest battles in the Vietnam War, with the American forces outnumbered by as much as 10 to one. Out of the battalion’s Companies A and D, 150 men, 57 were killed and 77 were wounded.
“He was the bravest man I ever knew,” said Clark Welch, his company commander, at the dedication of Durham Hall in 1999.
Durham, a forward observer, wounded and under fire, moved into an exposed position, where he called in protective artillery fire almost on top of his position.
“Lt. Welch remembers seeing the brave artillery lieutenant pressing the ‘press-to-talk’ button switch on his radio handset with the stub of his wrist, because his hand had been blown off,” retired Brig. Gen. James E. Shelton, the operations officer that day, wrote in The Beast Was Out There (The 28th Infantry Black Lions and the Battle of Ong Thanh).
Durham was found still holding his radio handset.
“I’ll never forget the day my manager told me to get home right away,” Durham’s older brother, John, said. “I knew something bad had happened. I wondered if my father had another heart attack, or something had happened to my wife, or someone had run over my children. It didn’t occur to me to worry about Pinky, because to me, he was invincible.”
Stephen Orlofsky, Durham’s cube mate, at Officers Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was commanding a Pershing Missile battery in West Germany on that fateful day. A partner in the law firm Blank Rome, he stepped down from his position as a federal district judge in New Jersey a few years ago.
“We were like brothers,” he said about Durham. “I have his photograph and a copy of the Medal of Honor Citation, which I hung over a copy of our class photo in my chambers. Whenever I came in and thought I was having a hard day, I would look at that and remember.”
Durham died five days after his 25th birthday, the day his brother called the worst day of his life. The second worst day came just a few days later.
“I remember when I showed up in Tifton, and my father came out of the house completely broken,” John Durham said about Harold Bascom “Bull” Durham Sr., who had served as a Marine during World War II.
Durham Sr. died within the year and never knew about his son’s honor. John Durham learned his brother had earned the Medal of Honor on the second anniversary of his death, and the family traveled to the White House, where Vice President Spiro T. Agnew made the presentation.
“I met Stephen quite by accident,” he said, “at the dedication of Durham Hall. Ever since, on Pinky’s birthday and Memorial Day, he has sent a personal message to me and our sister, Genie (Horton). Every single time.”
Durham has been remembered in a number of ways. The story of Ong Thanh has been told both in Shelton’s book and David Maraniss’ They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America October 1967, a Pulitzer Prize-finalist and winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. A PBS documentary, “Two Days in October” tells the story of the battle. The Pinky Howitzer sits in front of Durham Hall, the Hall of Fame for the former Field Artillery Officer Candidate School, and a highway and a Disabled Americans post are also named in his honor.
Orlofsky says Memorial Day is always tough for him, but he enjoyed telling the stories of his friend, who wasn’t all that good at math – a key skill for an artillery officer – but always had time for a friend and a good laugh.
“I had always avoided going back to Oklahoma,” he said, “but our classmates said I had to go back for the dedication of Durham Hall. One other thing they didn’t tell me that I was going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I consider that one of the greatest honors of my life – and now Pinky and I are together again.”
Ann Butler knew Harold Bascom “Pinky” Durham Jr. as a girl growing up in Durango. She still remembers him telling her parents he had volunteered for a second tour in Vietnam because his experience in-country might save someone else’s life. It did but at the expense of his own just two months later. He got his nickname because the hospital where he was born ran out of blue blankets and wrapped him in a pink one.
This story has been modified to reflect the fact that Stephen Orlofsky was stationed in West Germany when Durham was killed.
Medal of Honor 101
The Congressional Medal of Honor was created in December 1861 at the start of the Civil War to “promote the efficiency of the Navy.” The first medal was for seamen and sailors – no officers allowed. An Army medal was authorized in July 1862, and officers became eligible in 1863.
Visit www.cmohs.org to learn more about America’s highest honor and www.pinkydurham.com to learn more about Durham.
Some interesting facts about the medal:
3,487 Medals of Honor have been awarded, with 77 recipients currently living.
The first recipient was Jacob Parrott, one of six to receive medals for the “Great Locomotive Chase” behind enemy lines during the Civil War; but the first action that resulted in a Medal of Honor being awarded took place before the war started when Dr. Bernard J.D. Irwin rescued a detachment surrounded by hostile Native Americans in what is now Arizona. He was not awarded the medal until 1894.
The most recent honoree was Kyle J. White on May 13 for actions in Afghanistan, where he exposed himself to great danger to rescue wounded comrades and obtain a working radio to call in air strikes that allowed them to be rescued.
Nineteen members of the military have received two Medals of Honor, including the first double recipient, Thomas Custer, a younger brother of George Armstrong Custer. Thomas Custer was also killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Dr. Mary Walker is the only woman to have received a Medal of Honor. Hers came thanks to her actions at the Battle of Bull Run in 1861, and after serving four months as a prisoner of war. It was revoked in 1917 because she hadn’t received it in combat, and reinstated in 1977 by President Carter.
Douglas Munro is the only Coast Guard recipient, earning his award for actions at Guadalcanal in 1942.
After their heroic actions May 22, 1863, at Vicksburg, Mississippi, 91 soldiers received the medal, including Durango’s David Frakes Day. It is the highest one day total in the medal’s history. A total of 120 medals were earned at Vicksburg by the end of the siege on July 4.
In November 1943, Detroit Lions football standout Capt. Maurice “Footsie” Britt earned the medal, becoming the first person to earn all of the military’s top medals, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star, in a single war.
Since President Clinton’s term in office, more than 50 soldiers, sailors and Marines have earned medals for their heroic actions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, including 24 in March. The medals were denied because of race, ethnicity or religion.
In 1993, Pueblo was named the Hometown of Heroes for having four living Medal of Honor winners residing there.
Famous winners of the medal include William “Buffalo Bill” Cody; President Theodore Roosevelt and his son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.; Charles Lindbergh; and Jimmy Doolittle.
Congressional Medal of Honor Society
