Korean War Medal of Honor recipient to be buried at Andersonville National Cemetery

Caption

U.S. Army Private First Class Luther H. Story died Sept. 1, 1950 in Agok, Korea

Credit: Congressional Medal of Honor Society website

A Georgia soldier will be laid to rest this Memorial Day, 72 years after he was killed in the Korean War.

The burial at Georgia’s Andersonville National Cemetery comes a year after DNA and other analysis helped to identify the remains of Army Corporal Luther Story.

Story, who was born in Buena Vista, west of Atlanta, and went to high school in South Georgia’s Americus, died near Pusan, Korea in 1950.

But his remains couldn’t be identified at the time.

He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in combat.

Andersonville National Cemetery superintendent Gia Wagner says Story will become one of only two so honored and buried there.

“It’s the highest award for military valor,” she said. “These are people who risked their lives.  They went above and beyond the call of duty.”

At Andersonville, the only other Medal of Honor recipient is Army Sergeant James Wiley, who died there when it was a prison during the Civil War, Wagner said.

Monday’s funeral will be open to the public with Story’s surviving niece, Judy Wade of Americus, whose mother was his younger sister, expected to attend.

Wade met President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., last month when the U.S. announced that the remains had been identified.

“The supreme sacrifice and heroism of Corporal Luther Story is illustrative of the freedom, security, and prosperity the South Korean people have today,” the two world leaders said in a joint statement.

Before his remains were identified, Story was buried as an “unknown” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, Hawaii.