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Remember...Lawrence Alexander Meredith
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Lawrence Alexander Meredith was born August 12, 1930, in Fort Spring, West Virginia, the youngest of 8 children born to Joseph Lee and Virginia Dolan Meredith.
Lawrence lived in Frankford, where he was a member of the Frankford Methodist Church and attended Frankford High School, graduating in 1949. While in school, he participated in football, baseball, and boxing and also was a member of the Varsity Club and president of his Sophomore Class. .
On June 25, 1949, he joined the army in Beckley. He received training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Camp Campbell, Kentucky, after which he was sent to Korea on September 6, 1950. While in Korea, Lawrence was a member of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion. .
The 187th Airborne entered combat on October 20, 1950, their mission being to block the advance of the Chinese Army. On February 13, 1951, while erecting a barbed-wire fortification, the unit was overrun by Chinese forces near Wonju, South Korea, and Lawrence Meredith was captured. He was declared dead on December 31, 1953, but his family did not know until decades later that he had been taken to a POW camp in North Korea following his capture. The circumstances of his death remain a mystery. .
In 1993, North Korea gave 34 boxes of remains to the United Nations. Through the efforts of the Joint POW/MIA Accountability Command, the Korean War Project and others, Sergeant Meredith's remains were identified and returned to the United States. He was buried next to his parents in Rosewood Cemetery in Lewisburg on October 22, 2009.
Photo courtesy of Shawn Meredith, nephew
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.
