By WKTV Staff
ken@wktv.org
Veterans and the public are invited to a ceremony for National Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Recognition Day — also known as National POW/MIA Recognition Day — on Friday, Sept. 20, at 2 p.m., in the temporary chapel at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans, 3000 Monroe Ave., N.W., Grand Rapids.
This annual event is organized by Betty Pike, wife of Vietnam Veteran Jim Pike, who passed away at the veterans home earlier this year. Special recognition will also be given to four returned former MIA from Michigan. The Rev. Bill Campbell will officiate the event.
“We must remember that every prisoner of war or person missing in action has a name, a family, a story,” Debbie Piepsney, President of the POW Committee of Michigan, said in supplied material.
According to supplied material, similar events will be held across the country. In the United States, National POW/MIA Recognition Day is observed on the third Friday in September. It was created to honor those who were prisoners of war and those who are still missing in action or unaccounted for. Most often, this particular event is associated with Vietnam Era veterans who became POW or MIA.
It is recorded that an Act of Congress established the passage of a National POW/MIA Recognition Day as part of the 1998 Defense Authorization Act. This event differs from the National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day, which was created by Congress in 1988. National Former POW Recognition Day commemorates the April 9, 1942 surrender of an estimated 10,000 United States military personnel and 65,000 Filipino soldiers on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines to the invading Imperial Japanese Army.
For more information on the event, call the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans at 616-364-5300.
